Morgan appeared before the London Assembly's transport committee this morning to answer to the evidence given by Khan to the assembly on 21 December, in which he accused the former former Crossrail chairman of “misremembering” events.
Last summer a political crisis was triggered over the delay to Crossrail, which was originally set to open last month but has since been delayed past 2019.
The London mayor has maintained he was not informed of the need for a new opening date until 29 August, two days before the public was informed that the railway had been pushed back. Morgan has contradicted his account, saying the mayor was made aware that a 2018 opening date was "no longer feasible" on 26 July.
At the London Assembly grilling this morning Morgan said he was "disappointed" at the "personalising" of the Crossrail delay against him.
"I do not suffer from loss of memory, "he said. "Do you really think when a piece of paper says delivery in 2018 is not feasible that it is what it is?"
The former Crossrail boss also told the assembly that Transport for London (TfL), which is a joint sponsor of the project with the Department for Transport (DfT), gave him a piece of paper with what to say at a TfL board meeting on 25 July, which removed any mention of there being a delay to the Elizabeth Line.
He added that TfL also deleted a paragraph in a 19 June Crossrail briefing note to the mayor which removed the fact that there would be insufficient time to complete testing.
The former chairman is referring to a tranche of Crossrail board minutes released by TfL in a "document dump" at the end of last year.
Among the the documents was a slide shown to the mayor and TfL executives on 26 July that the December opening date was "high risk". The mayor has said that in spite of the warning, neither he nor TfL were given indications of the need for a new opening date.
Following Morgan's account Khan's deputy mayor for transport Heidi Alexander appeared before the committee. She said: "This idea that on 26 July Sir Terry ruled out a December 2018 opening date is simply not true and it did not happen."
In the first weeks of taking up her post, Alexander said she was struck by the "real resistance and a lack of realism from Sir Terry about what was really going on with this project".
Responding to Morgan's accusation that TfL had omitted references to the project's delay in certain documents, Alexander said: "I have no knowledge of the process of the preparation of those notes.
"I would be as interested as you if there were changes made."
Source : CityAM
TAXI LEAKS EXTRA BIT :
There are lies, there are damn lies, then there are redacted statements from TfL to support the Mayor. It's also interesting to note that the Mayor's deputy for transport, has accused Sir Terry Morgan of making a statement that is "simply not true and it did not happen". I am of the opinion, the statement from Hidi Alexander, could be construed as an accusation that Sir Terry was lying to the GLAtransport committee.
It appears to me that Teflon Sid, is again trying to shift the blame away from himself and onto someone else. We've already seen this week how Khan massaged the statistic on London's "Toxic" air, accusing London Taxis of being responsible for 30% of the pollution. His figure is in stark contrast to TfLs own, which previously show Taxis responsible for just 2%.
But then perhaps Khan didn't have time to redact TfL's pollution breakdown.
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