| Topic: | Reply | |
| Posted by: | Gordon Southwell | |
| Date/Time: | 19/11/21 15:10:00 |
Although I'm not going to argue that in some cases public sector pay is excessive a £12million bonus pot for an organisation the size and complexity of TfL isn't necessarily excessive. It's a very small part of its overall budget. This would include key staff such as engineers, accountants, lawyers and IT professionals who are essential to the network and need to be incentivised to stay when they are likely to be getting offers to move. If you can provide some specific examples of misuse of bonus payments at TfL that demonstrate profligacy I'd be interested but for the time being it is more important to focus on the bigger picture. TfL had seen a substantial improvement in its financial position before the pandemic comparing the situation to when Boris Johnson left. All city transport networks in Europe are subsidised by governments and, per passenger, London gets the smallest amount of any major population area. Our fares are the highest already. The notion, therefore that somehow TfL has the ability to maintain services and keep fares affordable without government support is delusional. These regular negotiations in which the government takes it to the bring every time are just ways to squeeze more money out of Londoners by forcing TfL to introduce more charges and take away more travel benefits than they would be inclined to. With the north and Midlands up in arms about betrayal despite the fact that £96 billion is about to be spent on them, it plays very well in constituencies that the government is seeking to keep that tube and bus services are being cut and so that is what we may need to brace ourselves for. |