HC Deb 22 October 1990 vol 178 cc10-1
8. Mr. Harry Greenway

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what measures are being taken to improve the Central line of London Underground.

Mr. Freeman

The Central line is currently undergoing modernisation costing more than £700 million and involving 85 new trains and complete resignalling. The first of the new trains is expected to run in early 1992 and the whole programme is scheduled for completion by 1995.

Mr. Greenway

I thank my hon. Friend for outlining those welcome improvement programmes. In the meantime, is he aware that for many of my constituents the Central line has become the new misery line? There is gross staff rudeness, graffiti all over the place, unpunctual trains and trains turned around without the people waiting for them being told. Other failures relate to the use of public address systems. Will my hon. Friend address himself to those problems and do something about them?

Mr. Freeman

I shall certainly pass my hon. Friend's comments on to London Underground, which tries hard to meet quality targets. The east-west crossrail will bring substantial benefit to the Central line between Paddington and Liverpool street stations at the end of the decade, when it is completed. I hope that my hon. Friend will join me and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) in inaugurating, in Ealing, the new anti-graffiti paint that London Underground is shortly to introduce. The end of graffiti man is at hand.

Mr. Tony Banks

Has the Minister seen the recent speculation in the press that due to a squeeze on London Transport, particularly as a result of the fall in the price in land, it will not be able to proceed with the Central line upgrading or the crossrail? Will he give an absolute assurance that both the improvements to the central line and those to Stratford railway station will go ahead?

Mr. Freeman

I can give that assurance. The fall in property receipts, to which the hon. Gentleman rightly refers, applies not only to London Underground but to British Rail. However, it will not affect progress on the Central line or on the east-west crossrail which, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, will be financed in the conventional way, largely by Government grant.