Violence Against Women and Girls on Trains

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

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.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

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?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

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.