London Underground

I absolutely agree, and I would only disagree because the hon. Lady berated the public sector comparator—the assumption of a 15 per cent. cost overrun. Would that it had been only 15 per cent. On the Jubilee line, the cost overrun was massively greater than 15 per cent. and it was therefore absolutely right for the Government to look for alternatives that would bring in good management and ensure that the very considerable backlog of repairs would be dealt with efficiently. Greenwich and Woolwich has only one link into the underground service—the Jubilee line. We can look at the performance of Tube Lines in the past five years and see a number of areas where very considerable improvements have been made. On completion, the Jubilee line lacked the signalling system that had been part of the original specification and would have allowed a much more frequent service than we have enjoyed. The line opened with a less than satisfactory signalling system, which has been the subject of a great deal of work and will have to be replaced in another year's time. Capacity was not up to the demand. Not surprisingly, the only link into the underground from Greenwich is hugely popular and there is very serious overcrowding. By 2005, we had seen the first of the upgrades conducted by Tube Lines: the extension of the seventh carriage, to join the six carriages on the original specification, and improvements in the underground access to North Greenwich station. That improvement has already been entirely absorbed by further demand. Therefore, a further upgrade will be required next year, to improve the signalling system and make good the defects of the original scheme, which was specified according to the formula that some of my hon. Friends have been arguing for: public sector control. We should not forget that the failure on some of those previous orthodox contracts was the background that led to the view that we should look for alternatives, such as the PPP. I am pleased to say that when the signalling transformation is carried out next year—I am confident from my discussions with Tube Lines that it fully understands what is required, and I hope that it will be as efficient in doing that as it was with the upgrade of 2005, which was conducted in an exemplary fashion and completed over the Christmas holiday period, involving minimal disruption to the public—we will see an upgraded line with 40 per cent. more capacity than it had in 2003 when the PPP was introduced. I regard that as a rather important achievement. I urge all Members, and particularly my right hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench, to take a balanced view. While rightly learning the lessons from Metronet's failure—I make no excuses for its lamentable failure—they must recognise that other parts of the tube service have had a different experience. From our perspective in Greenwich and Woolwich, the improvements in the Jubilee line over the past five years are enormously welcome and I hope that they can be sustained.