TFL CORRUPTION TO BE EXPOSED ...by David Davies

A media investigation into corruption and fraud at TFL/ The Mayors office is about to be released.


This fraud and corruption is not just a London issue; it has been covered up by the Mayor and a High Court Judge and yet David Cameron said last week that his number one objective for 2012 is to help Boris get re-elected. Surely the Prime Minister should be focussed on more important issues than getting his buddy re-elected ?


He has recently criticised cronyism yet he is the worst culprit. Boris has an appalling record as Mayor; The Environmental Audit Committee gave a damming report about emissions in London , which have caused more than 4000 deaths and these deaths are directly attributable to the Mayors unlawful and improper strategies.

• TFL has existed unchecked as a corrupt body which receives £9.6 billion a year in public funds yet is accountable to no one; the Government says The Mayor is responsible and he is either grossly incompetent or as corrupt as TFL themselves.The clear evidence that TFLs strategies have failed is the report from the Environmental Research Group at Kings College saying there has been no improvement in emissions in London for 10 years, The Mayors own report showing 4267 people a year dying from pollution, the impending EU fines of £300 million for London’s failure to meet emissions standards and the Environmental Audit Committee Report condemning the Government and London’s pollution.. It begs the question why has this been allowed to continue unreported and with no accountability?
• The Mayor openly mocks assembly members and MPs when he is challenged; he recently said that they should be congratulated for getting the EU fines deferred (which was done by cheating the air quality measurements by using dust suppressants at the measuring stations). He also said that the pollution had been ‘blown in to central London from Europe’ (miraculously avoiding outer London).
• TFL have failed strategies include the LEZ and more recently they have introduced an Age Limit on Taxis, which will not reduce emissions at all.
• TFL have failed to uphold the law with regards to Private Hire regulation and it is reported that widespread corruption has taken place to allow for this to happen. Many hours of video footage with strong evidence of corruption has been filmed.
• In 2008 a High Court Judicial Review was brought against TFL . Justice Hickinbottom who was appointed to hear the case against TFL, had previously worked with TFL as a Parking Adjudicator. When he was appointed as a Judge he was congratulated on his appointment by them in a report. He ignored obvious evidence of improper and unlawful conduct and upheld one of TFLs decisions.

I have filed a complaints to TFLs internal and external Audit, GLAs internal and external Audit, the GLA standards Committee and the Local Government Ombudsman. The complaint below about unarguable fraud and corruption which took place with regards to a taxi emissions strategy in 2008 was filed with the Metropolitan Police. The completely ignored this complaint (which is hardly surprising because the Mayor is also responsible for the Met) and this is now being investigated as an IPCC complaint.


The summary of my complaint to the Met;

1. In 2006 the London Cab Drivers Club tested some of the Public Carriage Office approved emissions systems which were not working effectively and these systems failed a Vehicle Certification Agency test.
2. In a subsequent High Court Judicial Review brought by the LCDC the PCO successfully defended the approval of these systems saying that one or two failed tests was not enough to withdraw the approvals as the systems had undergone rigorous approval testing and that the test conducted by the LCDC were not valid because the taxis were not in a fit condition (in one case they said the engine was overheating)
3. In 2007 Eco-Power started selling its approved emissions system at £1100 + vat (nearly half the price of other systems) and sold through smaller garages (not through exclusive dealers who were making a profit)
4. n January 2008 the PCO conducted a rigged test on an Eco-Power system. There was no baseline test to prove the fitness of the taxi as required by the PCOs own test protocol and procedure. The taxi was not in a fit condition; the garage who installed the system refused to sign a Certificate of Fitness because the engine was overheating. The PCO still proceeded to test the taxi and did this so it would deliberately fail.
5. In complete contradiction of its previous statement in 2006 that a single failed test was not enough to fail a system , the PCO used this single rigged failed test to with draw the approval.
6. In a High Court Judicial Review the Judge ruled that the PCO had made 2 unlawful decisions and had acted in a high handed manner and discourteously, but upheld the decision to withdraw the approval.
7. Subsequent to the Court case Finn Coyle who had conducted the rigged test by the Energy Savings Trust on behalf of the PCO and who also gave false information to the High Court Judge, was rewarded with a highly paid job at TFL.
8. No other emissions system has ever been subjected to any emissions testing or therefore had its approval withdrawn. This is despite the fact that 2 companies went out of business because their systems were failing so badly; their approvals are still in place to this day even though their systems did not work at all. Many London Assembly Members and MPs have asked the Mayor on many occasion why no other testing has ever been carried out and he has avoided their questions.
9. The companies that were profiteering from the sale of the ineffective systems had close affiliations with the PCO.
10. Ex-PCO employees have given statements saying that corruption has taken place and nothing has been done; no investigation has been carried out and no statements taken from anyone.

IT IS ABSOLUTELY UNARGUABLE THAT CORRUPTION HAS TAKEN PLACE AND THERE IS UNARGUABLE EVIDENCE TO PROVE SO.


The complaint (which is outlined in more detail below) is that the Public Carriage Office carried out a rigged test on an Eco-Power Emissions Reduction system and withdrew its approval which was in complete contradiction of its previous action; in 2006 the London Cab Drivers Club had tested some other emissions systems which failed and in a subsequent High Court Judicial Review the PCO defended these systems saying that they had undergone a rigorous approval and that one failed test was not enough to withdraw an approval. The EST employees who conducted the rigged test and provided false evidence in the High Court were later rewarded with highly paid work for TFL.


I believe that the Eco-Power system approval was withdrawn because we had sold the system at a reasonable price which had effectively stopped other distributors from profiteering from the project. There is strong evidence to show that these other distributors had close association with the PCO.


There are former TFL employees who are prepared to give evidence.
(This list has been removed by the editor)


The further details of this complaint are below. The latest questionable decision is an age limit on taxis, which on the face of it seems like a reasonable thing to do to reduce emissions. In reality the technical evidence shows that this project will not create any significant reduction in emissions. The only benefit to this project is a huge commercial benefit to 2 companies who are selling new taxis, and begs the question why would TFL implemented a strategy which has not be properly researched and will only serve to give certain entities commercial gain?


My complaint is that the PCO have made unlawful decisions (as ruled by a High Court Judge) and its decisions have been unfair and inconsistent. A public office has a legal requirement to have fair and consistent decisions, so the conduct of the Head of the PCO and the Head of Delivery (Thompson and Stock) could constitute a criminal offence. i.e. misconduct in Public Office
I would question the motivation for these decisions and the only way that this will be exposed is by a proper investigation. I have filed complaints to TFL and the Mayors Office but every complaint has been answered by the PCO, which is in itself an incorrect practice.


TFL has recently said that they intend to impose further emissions controls on London Taxis, when the emissions programme that they have already implemented has been completely mis managed meaning that most London Taxis are no cleaner than they were before. In fact some are causing more pollution. The whole project is a complete farce


My company, Eco-Power designed, developed, manufactured and distributed an emissions reduction system for London Taxis which was approved by the PCO. My company has no affiliations with the large taxi fleets, the EST or the PCO. Prior to the Eco-Power system being sold the other approved systems were sold through the main taxi fleets and garages at a price which enabled profiteering to take place and which would force the smaller garages and operators to buy them.


Eco-Power sold its system at £1100 +vat when the other systems were previously sold at £2000 or more. We also sold to the smaller garages and operators (over 70 were approved installers) which meant that the bigger players were no longer selling any where near the amount of systems that they had previously.


There is clear evidence that the bigger garages and operators have close associations with the PCO.

In February 2008, only 6 months after the approval of the Eco-power system, the PCO contacted Eco-Power and claimed that there were problems with the system. They independently tested the system on a taxi which would have not passed a test with any system installed and when it failed they withdrew the approval.(The taxi they tested on had not been serviced properly which meant it was creating far more smoke than a properly serviced taxi would)


This test did not comply with the EST/PCO test protocol which required a baseline test to be conducted to demonstrate that the taxi was in a fit condition to be tested.


I protested that this was completely unfair- the Eco-power system was working very well at reducing the emissions with no complaints from anyone and they targeted this system alone. This completely contradicts their policy just a year before when the London Taxi Drivers Club complained about the failure of the other systems which were actually causing more smoke than they stopped and actually took the PCO to the High Court for a judicial review . The PCO argued that the taxis which had been independently tested had other faults which caused the taxis to fail an emission test. They then tested the Eco-Power system under the same conditions and declared the tests were valid.


The garage that was appointed by the PCO to install the Eco-Power system to be tested said that the taxi was not in a fit condition to test and refused to sign a certificate of fitness. The garage owner gave a statement saying that the engine was overheating (among other faults) and that the vehicle should not be tested.


The PCOs own test protocol and procedure was for a baseline test to be conducted on a taxi before an emissions system was fitted to prove that the taxi was in a fit condition to test. No baseline test was conducted prior to the test used to fail the Eco-Power system, and if it had been conducted the taxi would have failed because of the faults highlighted by the taxi garage.


During the High Court case which resulted from the PCO withdrawing the approval, Eco-Power requested that comparative scientific testing should be done for all the systems which had been approved to give a true picture of the effectiveness at reducing emissions to the required level. This was refused so Eco-power did some further independent testing to compare with another system. A taxi was fitted with the Eco-power system and tested and then with a Taxicat system and tested. Both systems got very close to the required emissions levels but did not achieve a pass. However the Eco-power system performed better than the Taxicat system which was still approved by the PCO.


This controlled test gave a clear indicator that the PCO had withdrawn the approval for the Eco-power system which was performing better than a system that they had not withdrawn and they still did nothing. They actually subsequently appointed TaxiCat to try and modify the existing Eco-Power systems to improve their performance (even though they had evidence showing this companies system performing worse than the Eco-Power system)


I need to make the point that in order for any emissions system to pass a test it takes months of preparation to get the engine in the correct condition.


An approval for an emissions standard does not necessarily mean that if you take that vehicle off the street and test it will pass the emissions standard for which it is approved. An example of this would be a test that was carried out on a brand new TX4 (which is supposed to have a Euro 4 approval) failed a Euro 3 test (which is half of a Euro 4 standard)


As a public body the PCO has a legal requirement to have fair and consistent decisions. This has certainly not been the case. (please see email detailing PCO notice 50/06)


The reason I would question the motives of the PCO is the way in which the PCO targeted the Eco-power system which in practice was working well and at the same time they had previously defended the other systems which were failing dramatically.


These other systems were failing so badly that the filters were blocking and then being bypassed by a hole being made through them (they were doing absolutely nothing to stop tailpipe emissions) Garages installing other systems said that they were having to disable them as soon as they had gone through an inspection to stop them causing problems with the engine. It is worth mentioning that during the approval procedure the systems were required to conduct a 10k mile durability test. In order to maintain the integrity of the test Eco-Power installed a very comprehensive tracking system on the taxi being tested which had online access 24/7 for the PCO/EST to monitor the taxi. It gave the exact position and speed of the taxi to show that it was completing the 10K miles in the normal drive cycle and that it was definitely doing 10k miles and not having the Speedo adjusted to look as if it had. None of the other systems were tested in this way, only Eco-power. One of the other systems had so many filters blocking and parts breaking that they went out of business yet the PCO still kept their approval in place


During the High court case the Judge found that the PCO had acted in a high handed way and that the PCO had unlawfully withdrawn 2 of the Eco-power approvals. He also said that Eco-power had fulfilled the requirements of the approval procedure for the 3rd approval legitimately but the PCO had the right to withdraw it following their subsequent testing (even though this testing was not conducted properly)


The entire project has been completely mismanaged from the start by the PCO and EST. What is worse is that they have not been held to account for their mistakes.
The result is that London taxis are creating more pollution now than they were previously.


Eco-power has had a London Taxi fitted with the system for which the approval was withdrawn and it has been tested at a VCA approved laboratory. It has passed the required Euro 3 test and the PCO have been informed. They are refusing to re-instate the approval saying that the entire approval procedure will have to be carried out again, which includes a 6 month 10,000 mile durability test. This is despite the fact that a high court judge has ruled that the original approval procedure was legitimate; they are obviously changing the rules to suit their position.


At the same time they have conducted absolutely no conformity tests on the many systems which are failing dramatically.
The above conduct does not comply with TFLs legal requirements for Fair and Consistent decisions and practices.


The evidence that they have not complied with their legal requirements is unarguable. It is therefore the case that whoever has made these unlawful decisions is guilty of Misconduct in Public Office which is a criminal offence.