Uncovering the JLE cover-up

Contract Journal has not exactly been London Underground's publication of choice lately. Our crime - holding out against spin-doctoring and telling the truth about the £2.75 billion Jubilee Line Extension debacle.

The official PR line has been consistent - everything's moving smoothly towards an opening in time to whisk 12 million visitors to the Dome. We are expected to clap like circus seals and to maintain what is, in effect, a cover-up. The actual facts tell a very different story.

We reported as long ago as August last year that this taxpayer-funded project faced a lengthy delay, from September this year to beyond 2000, owing to adversarial management, frequent design changes, poor industrial relations, skills shortages, claims battles, and a signalling system which will not work properly.

According to London Underground's PR this was just overblown nonsense. Then, the week after our story, LUL's MD Dennis Tunnicliffe officially confirmed that the opening date would indeed be delayed until "spring" 1999. And this may only be possible because a massive acceleration programme was ordered to avoid the nightmare scenario of overshooting the millennium.

In fact the project is going so smoothly that project director Hugh Doherty has been ordered to report every two weeks to transport minister Glenda Jackson. It seems that the Government does not share LUL's relaxed attitude, as it has now also called in US giant Bechtel to rescue the project.

Little wonder then that Government is to privatise the operation of the tube network. If the project has been such a model of efficiency, then presumably London Underground would welcome a National Audit Office enquiry.