Public Private Partnership of the London Underground is.....

PPP - One year on and what do you think?

Obviously a leading question.

"Travellers on the London Underground have endured a dramatic collapse in the network's reliability since its part privatisation a year ago, with private contractors being forced to pay heavy fines (�32.2 million in fact) for failing to deliver on their commitments.

"Internal London Underground documents seen by The Guardian reveal that the government's public private partnership (PPP) has had a disastrous start, with soaring breakdowns, track problems and points failures."

It gets worse:

"According to LU's internal figures, the number of train failures every month has jumped by 23% this year. Track problems have risen by 20% to 76 a month and points failures are up by 38% to 46 incidents a month."

Tube Lines, which runs the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, is the worst . Since the beginning of 2003, it has been fined �16.8m for missing targets. Terry "Tezzer" Morgan, the head honcho of Tube Lines, said: "I have to say we've been challenged by the condition of some of the assets we're working with. Things have historically been done on a 'make do and mend' basis."

And some excellent hefty spinning by John Weight the head of Metronet. He says reliability was within the bounds of what he expected but "probably at the lower end". "As far as we're concerned, it's been a year of good progress. We continue to learn and understand some of the shortcomings of the network."

More on PPP, if you can face it, in Google News.