Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone clash over Underground delays

Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone clashed over delays on the Tube today as the battle for City Hall intensified.

The Mayor was urged to "get a grip" on Underground services after figures showed a huge rise in delays and stations closures.

But Mr Johnson hit back at his Labour rival, claiming Mr Livingstone supported the strikes that had slowed the network. The Tube is set to be a key flashpoint in the run-up to next year's rematch between Mr Johnson and Mr Livingstone.

Transport for London's own figures - released by Labour - revealed that passengers were spending 10 per cent more time on delayed trains than a year ago, rising to 33 per cent on the Central line.

Station closures had increased by 1,250 per cent on the District line and 100 per cent on the Northern line while the Jubilee line suffered regular signal delays and Victoria line users faced problems with doors failing to close.

Mr Livingstone said: "The increased number of delays and closures on the Tube are causing huge frustration and inconvenience for millions of Londoners. It's time for Boris Johnson to roll his sleeves up and get a grip."

The figures piled pressure on Mr Johnson to deal with problems, including improving communications to passengers and tackling weekend engineering works over-running into Monday mornings.

Daniel Moylan, the Mayor's deputy at TfL, said: "The Livingstone campaign is guilty of extraordinary hypocrisy in complaining about a degradation of service that was caused by the very strikes that they supported.

"They claim it is Boris's fault but the official figures from TfL show that without the strikes there would have been an improvement in performance."

Mr Johnson's team accused Labour of "cherry-picking" a period - between 14 November and 12 December last year - when performance dipped solely because of two strikes.

A spokesman for Boris Johnson's campaign said: "While Boris Johnson fought for and is now delivering the biggest upgrade of the Underground network ever, Ken Livingstone and his union backers threaten to bring misery to hard-working Londoners by engineering strikes as a callous election ploy to get back into City Hall.

"It is pure hypocrisy for Mr Livingstone to deliberately mislead commuters by cherry-picking a period when performance dipped solely because of two strikes forced on London by his militant friends.

"These strikes came at a time when a record number of journeys were made on the Tube - more than across the whole of Britain's national rail network - and while thousands were going about their Christmas shopping.

"The majority of London Underground workers did not vote for them and lost pay because of them. But Mr Livingstone and his team supported them, his running mate has even appeared on the picket line, showing his loyalty lies not with Londoners and Tube workers but with his union backers."

A TfL spokesman added: "These figures are completely wrong, as they compare one month which was disrupted by strike action with another [a year before] which was not."

TfL issued more figures showing the strikes over job losses and ticket office closures added one second to the excess journey time last autumn, which meant performance fell below the level of the year before.