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Pass user Iltyd Harringtonhelped introduce free travel for pensioners during the 1970s |
I say set the dogs on those who want to take away our Freedom Pass
ILLTYD HARRINGTON warns that London’s free travel scheme is again in danger
IT’S the moment of truth, time to face up to an unpleasant fact. I smell a rat. We who are old or very old are increasingly seen as an economic and social burden.
Ageism may not be lurking at the post office or the bingo parlour to mug us, but we are, it seems, a major irritant.
We are cluttering up the NHS, exhausting carers and care homes or, even worse, a timebomb under private and public pension funds as well as congesting the overcrowded graveyards. We are no longer offered political sugar, but the saccharine of financial rigour.
Our latest aggravation is the continuing use of the Freedom Pass. So this is the moment to flush out the enemy, who neither slumbers nor sleeps. So let’s begin at the beginning.
It was my privilege during 1974-5 to steer the initial proposals for free travel throughout the GLC (Greater London Council) area. There was to be no means testing, but a universal right for men over 65 and women of 60. It has been extended to other users and to all bus and rail within the boundaries of Greater London.
The 33 London boroughs, including the City of London, which provided a third of our revenue, coughed up, and the GLC fed the appropriate monies into London Transport, over which we had control.
To my disbelief, we were accused of patronising or, even worse, robbing pensioners of their “dignity” with this “unwanted charity”.
The benefits were quickly taken up and the Tory hypocrites silenced. A major intervention in public transport did not bankrupt local government or send pensioners on epic journeys into the depths of Epping Forest, or the fleshpots of the West End. They just became mobile. We were 30 years ahead of local government throughout the UK – only the Republic of Ireland 10 years before us had heaped greater benefits on pensioners.
The bus pass grabbed everyone’s imagination. I bumped into a friend, the Viscount Matthew Ridley, the Queen’s steward, in Victoria Street, popping into a nearby post office to fill out his application form and pick up his pass, which he told me later he carried off proudly to show Her Majesty.
London gave it enthusiastic approval. Elderly couples, defying the inexorable laws of long-term matrimony, started going out together again and socialising.
An incoming Tory GLC in 1977, under the questionable Sir Horace Cutler, left well alone.
At this point I want to stop and remember two effective Tory counter-attacks which followed. Thatcher, radiant in victory, entered Downing Street in 1979, invoking the prayer of St Francis of Assissi. Soon after, with a lack of his charity, she abolished the pegging of pensions to wages – not yet restored – a plank in her monetarist platform.
In 1981, London was shaken by the arrival of Red Ken at the GLC. I didn’t even tremble, as I was still No. 2 in County Hall.
Here comes the moral for a wrecker’s tale. We brought in Fares Fair, a bold and novel policy for big city transport – a reasonable, affordable system, which increased the use of public transport.
London experienced a proportional drop in private car use. Our first “revolutionary act” won massive support. Sadly and stupidly, a group of Tory councillors challenged the expenditure.
Why, they plaintively asked, should Bromley and Beckenham, where they were doomed to live, pay for a London-wide service. They mounted a successful argument before Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls. Afterwards, the Court of Appeal upheld his judgment – the scheme was smashed.
I can still hear the legal decision on fiduciary duty. But I also saw the consequences, which quickly reversed our social and environmental success in the capital.
Today, the miserable descendants of these forgotten fools have broken cover, encouraged by local election success. They bleat that the cost of the Freedom Pass has trebled and TfL is not democratic enough. The Mayor has too much power over it – why not restrict it to buses?
Sanctimonious cant! Their aim is to cut the cost and gradually put restrictions on eligibility.
Someone said: “Why look in the crystal ball when you can read the book?”
Well, in my book, in spite of their pious platitudes, I put them on a par with bogus officials, who gain access to pensioners’ homes and run off with their cash. Their criminal record in my calendar ranges from the parsimonious to the pernicious.
Pensioners be warned: it starts with petty crime, and ends with grand larceny.
Set the dogs on ’em!
 Pass user Elizabeth Hunt
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Power and money at centre of wrangleMAYOR of London Ken Livingstone has been accused of using the Freedom Pass as a stealth tax on Londoners as a war of words over the future of the concessionary travelcard escalates.
Mr Livingstone is locked in a row with London Councils, the association representing Town Halls across the capital, over apparent threats to place restrictions on the pass, used by disabled people and over-60s.
“I would be very distressed if there was any thought of restricting it in any way,” said pass-holder Elizabeth Hunt, shopping in Camden Road, Camden Town, on Friday.
At the heart of the row is a wrangle over money and power. Every local authority in London pays for the pass – at a total cost of £220 million – but the amount they pay each year is set by Transport for London (TfL), controlled by Mr Livingstone. London Councils, which claims the bill has risen by 50 per cent since 2001, wants Parliament to take the budget out of TfL’s hands. It has sponsored the Concessionary Bus Travel Bill, which reached the committee stage at the House of Commons last Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Conservative-controlled London Councils said: “Boroughs ask Parliament to protect the Freedom Pass from stealth tax
by London’s Mayor.”
London Councils’ transport chief Councillor Daniel Moylan said: “More than a million people use it (the pass) to live as independent a life as possible and we have absolutely no intention of changing that. We are simply asking that, if we cannot agree with TfL each year how much we should pay for it, the government should make the final decision.” Camden’s Lib Dem council leader Cllr Keith Moffitt said: “As usual the Mayor is mischief-making. Camden is committed to supporting the Freedom Pass.”
Mr Livingstone believes any erosion of his control of the pass would open the door to cuts. He added: “I have the power to step in and guarantee the Freedom Pass if the boroughs cannot agree among themselves (on cost). This guarantee is the safety net on which the continuation of the pass can be ensured.”
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