On May 8, 9:15*am, solar penguin wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
[original thread on uk.railway]
[x-posted to ik.transport.london]

On May 7, 11:59*pm, Bruce wrote:
Quite a surprise except to those who knew about the negotiations:

"Tube Lines' shareholders agree £310M buyout deal with TfL

Shareholders of London Underground contractor Tube Lines have tonight
agreed a buyout deal with Transport for London (TfL) for the PPP
arrangement with a price tag of £310M.

Let's see if I've got this right. The Tories are, in effect,
nationalising a private sector setup that Labour created...

My brain hurts!!!

Not so much "the Tories" as just the Tory Mayor, and he's probably
simply going with the flow and subscribing to the line from TfL
(Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy et al) that PPP was a general pain
in the arse. Remember one of his other big things he bangs on about is
"taxpayer value (for money)" - given the (draft) determination from
the PPP arbiter it looks like it simply makes financial sense for TfL
to buy up Tube Lines if they can, and they could, as the owners were
willing to sell - not least because after the PPP arbiter's much lower
determination of money due to them from LUL, it became rather less
worthwhile being in the infraco business in the first place.
Two further things to note - one is that the new Tories are apparently
rather less wedded to PFI schemes (and by extension PPP) - ideology no
longer appears to trump all - this seems to be a pragmatic approach
based on the real-world experience that PFI often doesn't deliver
value for money, and quite often delivers quite the opposite. (We
shall see what they do in government though.)

The second point is that Livingstone, were he still mayor, would
undoubtedly have absolutely leapt at this opportunity too. The Ken and
Boris positions on PPP are pretty much the same - Boris has pretty
much just continued Ken's approach to it all. (Also look at TfL's
purchase of Tramtrack Croydon Ltd, the 'owner' of Tramlink in '08 -
this was all set up under Ken's mayoralty but actually completed just
after Boris got in - however Boris professed his approval as an
example of VFM.)

I dunno whether this deal would have needed approval from central
government, i.e. the Treasury and/or DfT, and so when this approval
would have been sought (i.e. before or during the election campaign),
but another poster - D7666/ Nick - suggests (in the uk.railway
iteration of this thread) that this idea had been doing the rounds for
some time, so I'd guess they had some idea - and id necessary had
given it at least their provisional blessing - some time ago.
Nonetheless, a bit embarrassing for Gordon Brown - though I can't
imagine he would have been petulant enough to try and block it
(indeed, it's gone through so it would seem not), not least because it
simply makes financial sense - but it'd be interesting to know if it
was somehow delayed so that it didn't come out until after the
election...