My hon. Friend makes an important point. Essentially, the sponsor of the Bill and TfL are saying, “Trust us. Let us enter into limited partnerships with who knows who.” TfL wants to enter into a limited partnership, which is not a distinct legal entity, which has a clear consequence for public transparency. For example, we cannot use the Freedom of Information Act to find out who is behind the partnerships that TfL may get into. TfL says, “Don’t worry about it. We can be trusted.” The difficulty is that TfL’s behaviour during the past few years, with some of the developments we know about, shows that we cannot in fact trust it.
Caledonian Road is not a frivolous example. As the hon. Member for Harrow East said, it is one of the few tube stations that has disabled access that is available to the large number of people who go to watch the highly
successful Arsenal football club, but it will be closed for six months. What about Arsenal fans in wheelchairs during that time? TfL cannot look after a tube station with four shafts. It tells me that it needs to close it for six months to renew one of the lift shafts; yet it has two functioning lifts at the moment, both of which it will stop. I said, “The lift capacity is only 50%, so just use one lift while you are repairing the other one.” It replied, “Oh, but what happens if the lift that is in use breaks down?” I said, “Well, excuse me, TfL, but you’ve got lift engineers on site. You are re-doing the other lift shafts, so what’s your problem?”
If TfL has difficulty running a tube station, I have some concerns about its ability as a property developer, particularly if it goes into partnership with others. Those people may be perfectly adequate. TfL may go into partnership with a latter-day Peabody. That would be fantastic, would it not? It would be great if it went into partnership with somebody who really wanted to provide housing that was entirely appropriate for my constituents. The difficulty is that I do not really believe that, and I do not think that the hon. Member for Harrow East does either. TfL is trying to make as much money as it possibly can out of that land, and it will make as much money from affordable housing as it will from luxury flats.