Labour has accused Mayor of London Boris Johnson of not being able to deal with the job of running the underground system adequately. According to the party’s mayoral candidate, Ken Livingstone, recently published figures show that since the Conservatives came to power, disruption and delays on the tube network are every-day experience for the Londoners who use it.

Labour claims that between 9 January and 5 February delays caused to passengers on the Jubilee Line had increased by 26 per cent, delays on the Victoria Line were up 18 per cent and delays across the whole of the network had risen by three per cent.

Mr Livingstone said the increased inconvenience a frustration threatened to wear away at Londoners’ quality of life. Transport for London has hit back by claiming that Labour is being selective with the figures it is choosing and that, in fact, services have improved and delays have fallen.

A spokesman for the transport body said that the performance figures showed that delays to services of 15 minutes or over had declined by seven per cent. He pointed out that it was difficult to compare data from one month to another because delays were so often caused by external factors such as a person falling ill or some other sort of passenger action.

He went on to say that when the figures were examined in context they proved that in recent years the Tube’s performance in terms of the frequency and number of services, passenger numbers and reliability had improved significantly.