Violence Against Women and Girls on Trains

Question

15:22:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the passing of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024, what discussions the Department for Transport has had with the Home Office about the prevention of violence against women and girls on trains.

My Lords, tackling violence against women and girls on the railway network is a priority for the department, with my honourable friend the Minister for Local Transport and officials meeting their counterparts in the Home Office regularly. These meetings have been to co-ordinate and develop plans for tackling violence against women and girls on public transport, including trains, which will be a significant contributor to the success of the safer streets mission, part of the Government’s plan for change.

I thank the Minister very much for his Answer. Will the forthcoming Bill relating to the creation of Great British Railways contain a clear statement of the Government’s responsibility after nationalisation for the prevention of violence against women and girls on trains? Does the Minister agree that the potential for violence against women and girls on our railways needs to be prevented by measures such as decent lighting and the better design of trains and stations, rather than being dealt with by the British Transport Police after the event?

Taking the noble Baroness’s second point first, I completely agree that it is highly desirable to design out those features of railway travel which might contribute to any opportunity for violence against women and girls. My belief is that we do not need to wait for the railways Bill to do that, only to note that Great British Railways will have increasing control over the design of trains and, in particular, standards of lighting and closed-circuit television, which I think she is referring to. That will be very welcome, because it is quite clear that, although the British Transport Police is absolutely committed to tackling violence against women and girls, designing out opportunities for such violence to happen is a real priority.

My Lords, the British Transport Police has a key role in ensuring our public transport remains safe. Its funding comes, in part, from train operating companies. What discussions has the Minister had with the Treasury to ensure the British Transport Police is properly resourced as the railway moves into public ownership?

The British Transport Police is governed by the British Transport Police Authority, which is independent. There are no statutory powers that I or the Government have to intervene. Nevertheless, the authority decided that the budgetary increase for 2025-26 would be 5.9%, which is significant. Ten days ago, I met the authority and the British Transport Police—including the chief constable—along with train operators, Network Rail and Transport for London to ensure that the BTP’s independent operational plans maximise the best use of the budget in those circumstances and, in particular, contribute to reducing violence against women and girls.

My Lords, the slogan “See it. Say it. Sorted.” works best when, you having seen it and said it, there is someone qualified on the train to sort it. Does the Minister agree that there should be an increase—indeed, a guarantee—of people who are properly trained, on every train, so that there is a reduction in crime?

The opportunity for railway travellers to report crime through the 61016 phone number is not limited to what is happening on the train but includes what travellers see from the time they enter the network to the time they leave it. Many trains have one such person or more on them. Equally, in the case of trains that do not generally stop frequently, there is the opportunity of summoning police or other aid to the train.

My Lords, two policies would help to tackle violence against women and girls on trains: first, a ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol on public transport; and, secondly, ensuring that railway staff are present on platforms during scheduled train services. If the Minister agrees, when can we expect to see these changes implemented?

I thank my noble friend. It was quite a long time ago, but I was responsible for the original drink ban on the London Underground, which was enacted by the second Mayor of London. It was, by and large, successful—and it still is, although enforcement is always an issue. It is not practicable to have somebody in attendance on a railway platform for every station in Great Britain. Many of them have very few travellers, and those which are busy generally do have someone. I agree with the sentiment that it is desirable to have somebody on the platform. In fact, to be frank, it is better to have somebody around the station than it is to have them in a booking office, but those are discussions that the previous Government did not manage very well. This Government will think about how to best staff stations in order to make sure that all passengers feel comfortable and safe when travelling by train.

My Lords, I appreciate that the British Transport Police is responsible to an independent authority, but when one looks at its annual report, one sees many pages devoted to net zero and diversity and inclusion but nothing that I can find specifically about how it is tackling operationally violence against women and girls. Does the Minister think that the British Transport Police has got the balance right, or is there scope for improvement?

I assure the noble Lord that tackling violence against women and girls is a top priority for the British Transport Police. At the meeting I previously referred to with the authority and the BTP, the chief constable was vigorous in making sure that everybody knew that a significant proportion of the total resources of the British Transport Police is devoted to tackling violence against women and girls. I should be only too happy to ask the chief constable to brief the noble Lord personally about how much effort is being put into this subject. I hope he will take me up on that offer.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, made a good point about alcohol control—as the Minister said, he introduced it on the Underground—but I do not think that it needs someone at every station to prevent people taking it on-board. There are staff on many trains who could stop people drinking alcohol, and there are other people who could intervene, so I think that a ban could be effective. Furthermore, we should keep an open mind about the possibility of this suggestion. Many of the people committing these offences are recidivists, but they seem to have an unrestricted right to book a ticket on a train. I wonder what restrictions might be placed on their access to a public transport system, to prevent victims suffering as they do quite regularly.

I thank the noble Lord for his observations about alcohol. Travel on the railway means many different things to different people; a 15 or 20-minute journey is certainly tolerable—and probably preferable—without alcohol, but a five-hour journey, from one end of the country to the other, is probably not. There are provisions to ban the sale and consumption of alcohol on trains going to and from football matches, for example, so it has been thought through. However, it is rather draconian to prevent people on long journeys relaxing. The behaviour to which the noble Lord refers and the sorts of people he is talking about are behaviours and people that should be closely monitored in our society. I am not sure that I can easily see how one could prevent such people buying tickets, but it might be that the advent of modern technology makes their presence easier to identify, and certainly easier to identify if they commit offences, including terrible offences against women and girls.

My Lords, can the Minister inform the House how the railway police and the national police service work together to co-ordinate activities to stop this on trains?

I thank the noble Lord for that question. The British Transport Police covers the whole country, so its liaison is necessarily diverse across all the Home Office police forces and those in Scotland and Wales. It does a good job. A previous Question this afternoon referred to county lines drug trafficking. In recognition of the national function of the British Transport Police, it has been given £4.3 million for the next financial year by the Home Office to fund its county lines task force, which works with the Home Office police forces in the seamless identification of people travelling across what would otherwise be police boundaries, and in catching and convicting criminals for county lines and other offences.

My Lords, I am old enough to remember a phenomenon called the “ladies only compartment”—and I am not alone in that, I gather. I was required to travel in that compartment as a schoolgirl. Is the creation of a safety zone for women and girls on our trains something that perhaps might be considered under the “design out” approach to which the Minister referred earlier?

With modern railway rolling stock, it is far more difficult to partition off relatively small spaces. I too am old enough to remember women-only compartments, but compartment trains were undesirable in a whole pile of ways, including due to the relative isolation of people in different compartments. These days, while open carriages might not always be welcome if you are reading a good novel, they at least allow people to be in relatively open circumstances—and, hence, you would like to think that they would discourage people. The noble Baroness’s suggestion is a difficult one, given the configuration of modern railway rolling stock. To go back to the original point of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, to design out those nooks and crannies in railway compartments and those dimly lit places on railway stations is where we ought to go to reduce the opportunities for terrible violence against women and girls.