Boris Johnson ‘viciously and entirely wrongly accused the Mayor of London of ‘bankrupting’ TfL’

• FOR responsibility for cuts to free travel for Freedom Pass holders and under-18s, Christine Moulie (Letters, October 22) need look no further than the Department for Transport and successive Tory governments.

Government funding to Transport for London, worth £700million per year, was scrapped in 2015, making London the only major European city without central government investment in its public transport and thus almost entirely reliant on fares and self-generated income for survival.

In May the DfT would only let TfL have enough money to cope with a 90 per cent drop in fare income because of Covid-19 restrictions by imposing swingeing cuts to free travel and penalising the passengers Ms Moulie refers to; while at the same time giving millions to privatised rail companies to keep trains running and save them financially.

In the Commons Boris Johnson viciously and entirely wrongly accused the Mayor of London of “bankrupting” TfL. This abuse and the cuts appear to be part of a pattern that puts Tory hatred of anything publicly-owned, or used for public benefit, ahead of any vestige of providing a service for Londoners.

DON KELLER,
N15