Evening Standard Comment: Restaurant tips should pay for good service

The joy of a good meal is threefold: the food, the ambience and the service. Londoners are spoilt for choice when it comes to the first two elements. For the third, they demand good service wherever they go and on the whole are willing to pay for it.

So it is disconcerting to hear that high-street restaurant chain Côte is taking the entire 12.5 per cent service charge it adds to bills instead of distributing it among staff. In its defence, the chain says the practice allows it to boost the hourly rate it pays.

Côte is unlikely to be alone, but that does not make the practice right. We live in a time when diners demand clarity from restaurants in other areas, such as the provenance of the food they eat or environmental credentials.

There is some rationale in evenly distributing the service charges among all staff, so that kitchen workers are rewarded alongside their front-of-house colleagues. But the model severs the link the diner has with his or her waiter and the service they provide.

Restaurants that mislead diners should look for inspiration at StreetSmart, a homeless charity that many of them support in the run-up to Christmas. The voluntary £1 added to the table’s bill at the end of a meal is distributed to good causes. It is clear for all parties.

Waiting staff are far from charity cases but they deserve to be treated with such consideration, just as diners would welcome greater transparency.

Sadiq Khan’s warning today that the “nasty and inward-looking” tone of Labour’s leadership battle is seriously harming his party’s chances of winning next year’s London mayoral election will alarm those wanting a change of political direction at City Hall.

Mr Khan, the MP for Tooting and one of six on the shortlist to become Labour’s mayoral candidate, complains that talk of purges and coups and the labelling of rivals as “morons “ or “Tories” is giving the public a negative impression that could deter voters from backing his party. That assessment appears valid and reminds Labour members that disunity brings electoral failure.

But Londoners should not be distracted by acrimony infecting Labour’s national leadership contest and should focus instead on the merits of the candidates — and issues — in this compelling contest.

Mr Khan and his principal rivals, Tessa Jowell, David Lammy and Diane Abbott, are each independent figures who offer fresh thinking. Their policies and personalities should be judged in their own right. London’s Mayor need not be an acolyte of any national party leader. Ken Livingstone running London during Tony Blair’s premiership proved that.

Zac Goldsmith, the favourite for the Tory nomination, will present voters with one strong alternative when Boris Johnson’s replacement as London Mayor is chosen next year. But London needs Labour to mount an equally powerful challenge. The party should heed Mr Khan’s words and ensure that it does.

Londoners go into the weekend still waiting to know whether a deal can be reached to halt the threatened four days of strikes on the Underground planned for next week. That is deeply disappointing.

Negotiations will begin again on Monday but the inconvenience for those who plan ahead has already begun. This newspaper hopes the talks prove fruitful. The strikes should be called off. Let sanity prevail.