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Ken: ‘Why I’ll defend the Freedom pass’
• COUNCILLOR Daniel Moylan says there is no threat to the Freedom Pass from the London Councils umbrella group, but in that case why do he and his colleagues persist with their attempt to abolish my guarantee of the scheme? (Is there a threat to free travel for the over 60s? Feb 9).
At present I have the power to step in and guarantee the Freedom Pass for older and disabled people if the London boroughs cannot agree between themselves. London Councils wants to abolish this power, and have sponsored amendments in the House of Lords to remove it.
Cllr Moylan gives the game away when he complains both about the cost to the boroughs of running the Freedom Pass, and that no other part of the country has a similar scheme to guarantee their free travel concessions.
Often concessionary travel schemes outside London are just limited to bus travel – which is hugely different to the free bus, tube, tram and train travel scheme London pensioners enjoy – or operate for shorter hours. Bringing London into line with the rest of the country would certainly not represent a guarantee of the size and scope of the Freedom Pass.
In fact the differences between the London scheme and the rest of the UK are part of the reason that it is such a huge success.
If, as he says, the cost of the pass is too high then the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that Cllr Moylan and London Councils want to reduce it. This is a threat to the Freedom Pass.
This is not an isolated attack on the Freedom Pass. Cllr Phil Taylor for example, a leading councillor in Ealing, has argued that the Freedom Pass should be ‘re-targeted’ away from most pensioners to the ‘very old’. We have seen such language before. For ‘re-target’ read ‘cut’.
So readers of the West End Extra should be in no doubt, the Freedom Pass, which benefits over 28,000 Camden residents, is threatened. And as long as attacks on the Freedom Pass and other free travel schemes by Cllr Moylan and his colleagues at London Councils and the London Assembly persist, I will continue to speak up in defence of free travel schemes.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
Mayor of London
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