Mayor: Tube plans 'scandalously bad'

Labour conference: Transport

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Yesterday's highlights

Conference Sketch: Simon Carr

Andrew Dilnot and Carl Emmerson: The crunch may still be painful, Mr Brown

Leading article: Mr Brown will need more than tough words

Ken Livingstone condemned the latest phase of the part-privatisation of London Underground as "a scandalously bad deal" yesterday.

He told a Labour conference fringe meeting only around half the funding to be poured into the Circle, District and Metropolitan lines would pay for improvements to tunnels and track.

The London Mayor insisted the part-privatisation of the Tube did not represent good value for money. He said 35 per cent of the value of the contracts to renovate the so-called sub-surface lines was set aside to give private firms a return on their money.

He said: "That is a scandalously bad deal. We are in this mess because the Government does not like the idea of bonds. Everywhere else does this sort of thing with bonds."

Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Transport, revealed at the conference that a new safety system would be in place by the end of the month outside Paddington station, the site of the Ladbroke Grove disaster in 1999 in which 31 people died. He said the Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), which stops trains after they have passed red lights, would be operational for both Thames Trains and First Great Western services.

In the crash two years ago, a Thames Trains commuter service passed a signal set at danger and collided with a Great Western express. Critics argue the industry should have installed the fail-safe Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, which governs the speed of trains at all times and stops them before they can pass red lights. TPWS is not fully effective when a train is travelling at more than 75mph.