EXCLUSIVE: Paddick – Ken spends millions on promoting Ken, but I'll deliver what Londoners need

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The current mayor of London is more interested in political gimmicks than in delivering what London needs, says the Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick. Rory Baxter asked him what he would do differently for the capital


Where do you see the main inefficiencies in London and where things could be tightened up? Is there too much red tape?
It’s very complicated, particularly when it comes to development where you’ve got a multi-stage planning process. Where you’ve now got the mayor with even more power in terms of decision making over planning applications, local authority involvement and so forth. I think developers are being put off more and more in terms of trying to negotiate their way through all of this, there are too many hurdles to be overcome and as a consequence we’re not having enough new homes, for example, being built in London. The mayor needs to sit down with the local authorities and work through some principles which will hopefully result in better collaboration between them rather than the mayor apparently picking fights all the time. And give developers some reassurance that the answer they get from local authorities is the same as they get from the mayor and the same they’d get if their application goes beyond that.

What would you do?
We need to get local authorities and the mayor signed up to the same principles and then allow LAs, who are in the best position to decide where particular developments go, to make those decisions in order to streamline the application process. Clearly there are some things the mayor must have control over, you can’t have 33 local authorities deciding on public transport. There are some things definitely in the mayor’s court and other things where the decision should be made by LAs, and we need to have clear demarcation lines between the two. Probably the Japanese corporation who was giving Boris [Johnson, the Tory mayoral candidate] free accommodation to run his campaign from is wondering whether it was a good investment or not in terms of how much influence Boris will be able to have over their future applications.

Are there certain policies Livingstone has introduced that you would reverse?
Where do we start? The concern I have is I don’t see an integrated vision for London for the future. There seems to be far too much ad hocery, either Ken’s own pet subjects or those of his non-elected cronies taking precedence over what is important and what London really needs. Take the London Development Agency (LDA) funding for enterprise in the black and minority ethnic centre where it’s all very well for him to say Lee Jasper is very passionate about these things and it’s understandable he intervenes inappropriately in LDA decisions but where does that leave Muslim enterprise or other Asian businesses bearing in mind that Lee only appears to be passionate about Caribbean origin businesses? The whole thing needs to be looked at again. We have to make sure that the mayor and his advisers are actually working for the benefit of London and Londoners rather than working on some political, ideological basis or working on the basis of what they think is important as opposed to what Londoners think is important.

Transport is clearly a major issue in London. Do you have a solution to the problem that doesn't involve more charging?
The combination of different charges that are being brought in haven’t been thought through. Again, it’s a combination of ideological issues and a lack of thinking through the consequences. As far as the emissions charge is concerned, it’s costing £17m to set up, £10m a year to run, is likely to improve London’s air quality by between 0.3 and 1 per cent, but will put a lot of small businesses out of business if it’s carried through. On the one hand Ken says the reason he’s exempted private cars from the emissions charge is because he doesn’t want to impact on low income families but he’s taken no account of small turnover business. People in Portobello Road Market, for example, are telling me the western extension of the congestion charge plus the emissions charge is likely to result in the market going out of business because they can’t afford to have their vans upgraded, they can’t afford to pay £200 to have their existing vans drive around London and their customers can’t afford an £8 charge whereas before they were quite happy to drive to the market to pick up a bargain. It’s just not thought through. These are political gestures rather than real practical changes that are going to improve the lives of Londoners.

Do you think the congestion charge works?
The good news is there are 25,000 fewer vehicles in the central zone than before the congestion charge was brought in. The bad news is that peak time traffic speed is now slower than it was before the charge. So despite the reduction in the volume of traffic, which is what Ken keeps going on about, congestion is actually worse than before the charge was brought in, through a combination of him re-phasing traffic lights, taking out road space and not effectively managing roadworks. The answer to the problem is to get traffic moving, the answer to the pollution problem is to get traffic moving because traffic moving at 20mph creates half the amount of pollution than stationary traffic does. And so we need policies that hit that particular nail on the head rather than exempting band A and band B vehicles completely which is only going to encourage people to get off public transport and get into their cars, which will increase congestion further. I propose a £10 ‘boundary charge’ to try to discourage long distance commuting by car, to try to get people who are driving from places like Brighton into central London on to trains and buses. I want to bring forward plans for a retail consolidation scheme where goods to be delivered to central London go to a central distribution point, and reducing the number of courier vehicles that have to deliver, all of which are driving into London carrying one parcel, you end up with one van carrying as many parcels as it can, reducing the need for commercial traffic as well. Also, rather than snarling up the streets with more and more buses, particularly on the mass transit routes where you have bendy buses operating, a good idea is to bring in things like trams which can carry twice as many people as a bendy bus, because all Ken has done is replace car jams with bus jams.

Ken Livingstone is seen by some as having made the job of elected mayor credible again. Would you agree?
In some senses he’s made it credible in that there is a tremendous amount of power and to some extent he has shown what a mayor can do when you’re given unfettered power but on the other hand it means he has been able to pursue his and his advisers’ own personal objectives rather than delivering what London needs. It’s okay to have a mayor who listens to Londoners and listens to business in order to deliver what London needs to reinforce its position as a world city, but the danger is when you get someone like Livingstone who wants to pursue particular political agendas who isn’t universally pursuing the goal of making day to day life better for everybody in London. Too many political gimmicks, not enough delivery.

The Lib Dems are nationally against the elected mayor model yet have one of the most highly-regarded elected mayors in Watford’s Dorothy Thornhill and are obviously looking to have a London mayor. How do you explain this contradiction?
Yes, for me to support the policy of no elected mayors is a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas but clearly there is a role for a mayor for London, an ambassador for London to represent the city as a whole. It’s very difficult to get 33 leaders of councils or chief executives to stand up and speak with one voice. Whether you’re talking about inward investment or other issues you need someone who can be London’s representative. And clearly there are issues like transport, it would be chaos if you allowed each of the 32 London boroughs and the city to decide what the particular transport policy should be. We need to have a clear demarcation line between those things that the mayor should have absolute authority over like transport and those issues where he shouldn’t. For example when it comes to planning the mayor needs to agree a strategic plan for development in London to ensure expansion can continue in the way it has, but the mayor can’t be allowed to ride roughshod over democratically elected local politicians.

And Dorothy Thornhill? The mayoral system obviously works in Watford. Doesn’t that contradict the national policy?
Well, I think it was a case of if you can’t beat them join them! [laughs]. I think where you have a democratically elected mayor who is prepared to listen, who believes in local democracy, who is prepared to act on what ordinary people say and what business says, then it can work. What Ken Livingstone has proved is the worst nightmares Liberal Democrats have in terms of elected mayors, winning on a minority mandate – he claims to have a mandate but only 35 per cent of Londoners voted in the last election – and then using that in a very undemocratic way.

You've said that if elected you would also chair the Metropolitan Police Authority. Why would you choose to take up an option the current Mayor did not and how do you see this working?
This is typical of Ken Livingstone acting as a professional politician rather than in the interests of London. Londoners’ top concerns in poll after poll are crime and anti-social behaviour and yet he chooses to chair Transport for London but not the Metropolitan Police Authority. Why, because it’s too high risk an area for him to be involved with because he knows what’s really happening with crime is that it’s not going down at all, according to the British crime survey, the only scientific measure of levels of crime in London, and so he chooses the safer option to chair TfL. If Londoners’ number one concern is crime and that is the mayoral body that has responsibility for that, he should be chairing it.

Ken Livingstone is vociferous in his support for Sir Ian Blair. What's your opinion on how the Met has been led? What would you do differently?
Ken Livingstone has told me the only reason he supports Ian Blair unequivocally is because he can’t see a suitable replacement for him. I don’t think that’s good enough.

The recent Dispatches programme threw a lot of accusations at 'the court of Ken', including having an 'entourage' of 85 people on trips abroad, using the office of Mayor to tackle political opponents, setting up the Chavez/London bus deal, spending £23m on advertising and PR and spending £700 on room service. What's your take on these issues?
I’ve spoken to the journalist concerned and told him the balance between fact and emotion was perhaps slightly out of kilter and it weakened the argument. I think a rather more cool-headed factual account of what’s going on would have been much more damaging to Ken. And also the approach of the London Evening Standard has become a case of the boy who cried wolf, where now when people see the latest Andrew Gilligan revelations they think ‘Oh no, him again’, as opposed to taking seriously some of the things that have been brought up that reinforce my view about the pursuit of personal agendas as opposed to working for the benefit of London as a whole.

Do you think £23m on advertising and PR is excessive?
The latest issue of the Londoner, for example, is the most blatant piece of electioneering at taxpayers’ expense I’ve ever seen in my life, as well as being misleading. Why, only in an election year, does Livingstone freeze single bus and DLR and tube fares and feel the need to put it on the side of practically every bus in London? Since when do we have to tell passengers that the fares aren’t changing, and all of this paid out of money that would surely be much better spent improving the lives of Londoners, rather than promoting the mayor.

The London Assembly is said to be toothless in holding the Mayor to account. Do you think accountability should be stronger and, if so, would you reform the assembly or do it another way?
The difficulty is that because Labour and the mayor are in alliance with the Green Party – you’ve got Sian Berry doing a lot of campaigning to try to get Ken re-elected even though she’s supposed to be a rival candidate – this means the other parties cannot get a two thirds majority to challenge the mayor’s budget which is the only real power the assembly has. The mayor treats arguably the most democratically elected representatives of London (because a number of them are voted for by proportional representation) with complete contempt. For him to say when he’s asked to show more respect by the chair of the assembly “You haven’t earned it” just shows the level of contempt that the mayor has. It’s all very well for me to say it will be different when I’m mayor because I’ll be much more consultative and will work in coalition with the other parties, but what Ken Livingstone has shown is that you can’t leave it down to the personality of the person who is elected mayor, you have to have some sort of legal strengthening of the assembly’s position and/or some strengthening of the mayor’s requirement to consult on issues and to take people’s views into account rather than consulting like on the Western extension and ignoring completely that the overwhelming majority of people in the area didn’t want it. Something needs to change and not just the mayor, something needs to change in terms of legislation as well. As long as Ken keeps the Greens on board, he knows there’s absolutely nothing the assembly can do to stop him taking whatever line he wants to take.

What's your opinion of the London Development Agency, aka 'Ken's piggy bank'?
Clearly the LDA is a combination of local taxpayers’ money and central government money. With currently five fraud investigations by the Metropolitan Police into organisations that have been funded by the LDA it's clear the necessary audit trails, controls and checks on organisations before money is handed over are not in place. There needs to be a root and branch independent investigation into what those systems are and they need to be radically overhauled.

Presumably you believe you have a good chance of beating Ken?
The latest poll in the Standard shows both Ken and Boris’s support – and Sian Berry’s – waning and mine increasing. Which is exactly what we thought would happen. Ken and Boris have very high profiles and mine could only go up in the campaign. I think that the more people hear me talk and understand my policies the more they realise I am a credible alternative.

But what would be the main themes for you in the contest?
Londoners want someone who is prepared to take on the challenge and accept responsibility for crime rather than somebody like Ken who said about teenage violence that there’s nothing he can do. They want somebody to take responsibility, not someone who will run away from it. Boris has been good enough to admit he has no experience or background to be able to take on those issues, nor has Boris any experience of running large organisations with large budgets which I have. And I think we need to mobilise the 65 per cent who wouldn’t normally vote because they can’t stand politicians to vote for someone who isn’t a politician and, in fact, the only person in the competition with a clean pair of hands.

Livingstone is thought by many to be a kind of 'man of the people' with very strong principles who is not afraid of upsetting people with his opinions. Do you think this is how a mayor should behave or would you do things differently?
The difference between Ken and I is that Ken is prepared to ride roughshod over other people’s views in order to pursue political agendas. I am prepared to adopt radical policies if they deliver what London needs.

Why do you want to be mayor of London? What difference do you think you can make to the lives of Londoners?
Rather than holding a festival every week in Trafalgar Square, spending millions of pounds publicising my own name and face in every area possible, I want to work quietly behind the scenes to improve the day to day lives of Londoners and that’s where my entire focus will be.

So you’ll be less high profile …
I will be high profile in terms of raising the issues that Londoners are concerned about but I will be less high profile in promoting myself.

We have asked essentially the same questions of all main London Mayor candidates but Ken Livingstone and Sian Berry are yet to respond. You can read the Boris Johnson interview here