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Candidate decries Labour re-zoning plan as a doomed stunt

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A candidate standing in Croydon for election to parliament next May has dismissed a Labour campaign to change the zoning of East Croydon and West Croydon stations to help reduce commuter fares as “an electioneering stunt”.

All aboard: Do Labour proposals to re-zone Croydon stations go far enough for commuters?

And Glen Hart is a trades union official for the RMT, Britain’s largest transport workers’ union.

Hart has been selected as the parliamentary candidate for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, TUSC, for Croydon North, where the MP, Steve Reed OBE, wallows in a 12,000 majority.

“But what a poor stunt,” Hart said after Reed and the Labour candidate in Croydon Central, Sarah Jones, launched their campaign yesterday.

Reed and Jones want Transport for London to re-assign two Croydon stations from Zone 5 to Zone 4. If carried through, such a re-zoning could save commuters more than £300 per year in fares.

“TUSC will support any reforms that will benefit the lives of working people, and would support this idea too, were it not for its feebleness and opportunism,” Hart said. “It will not be carried out. Jones and Reed, in best yah-boo political style, will then blame Boris Johnson.”

Instead, Hart is calling for something more radical: the re-nationalisation of Britain’s railways.

Glen Hart: unimpressed by Labour’s cunning stunt

Hart believes that removing the £4 billion public subsidy handed over annually to the profitable private companies which run the railways could be used to reduce fares, and also to bridge the £2 billion funding cap for the NHS.

“The real solution to keeping fares down is to re-nationalise and re-unify the railways and run the industry as an efficient service for the public,” Hart said. “The private railways receive massive subsidies from the taxpayer. Last year they received £4 billion.”

Hart fears that if even if the re-zoning was implemented in Croydon by London Mayor Boris Johnson, TfL would simply “re-draw the zone boundaries elsewhere so as to recoup the cost. This would set Londoner against Londoner”.

Harts is also critical of the previous Labour government for saddling London Underground with Public Private Partnerships, burdening Londoners with ever-mounting costs to finance the deals. “PPP has added very many millions to the cost and complexity of managing the now fragmented Tube. The bundle of Tube contracts runs to 28,000 pages.

“Croydon commuters, like those all over London, are bearing the extra cost.”

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