Is Boris cooking the TfL books?

Boris Johnson and his team have been on the offensive over Ken Livingstone’s plans to cut fares (first by 5%, then by 7%), whilst the Tory mayor plans to raise fares at inflation busing levels year on year. Livingstone plans to fund his fare’s cut in part through utilising TFL’s multi-hundred million surplus, generated through increased fare revenue.

Except today, it appears that Boris Johnson and his allies have been cooking the books at TfL in order to hide the operating surpluses in the TfL budgets – through a huge one off debt repayment.

Between November 23rd and December 7th, debt repayments have shot up by around £200 million, which is roughly the same size as the surplus was. The surplus has now ‘disappeared’ – TfL have reallocated it to help pay off the deficit, conveniently after Ken Livingstone pointed out the size, and alternative uses for it.

And what happened between November 23rd and December 7th? Ken Livingstone announced that he’d use the surplus to cut fares by 7%.

Boris Johnson should explain who took the recent decision to hugely increase debt repayments this year. Was it on the orders of the Mayor or his office?

A spokesperson for Ken Livingstone said:

“It is a scandal that Boris Johnson is cooking the books of the transport body for London to to hide the huge annual surplus income.

“In doing so he is paying more money to bankers than he was planning to by raising current debt repayment plans – when that could be used to cut the fares. Even then, his own figures still show future annual surpluses that would permit fares cuts.

“The Tories will go to any length to prove that fares cannot be cut, in order to protect Boris Johnson from the electoral consequences of his own relentless fare rises.”