Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the prevalence of the practice of up-skirting on public transport.
We do not have an assessment of the prevalence of this practice for the whole of public transport.
‘Upskirting’ is likely to be a covert act by perpetrators to avoid challenge or detection, so reporting numbers are likely to be low.
However, for the rail network, the British Transport Police (BTP) has seen an increase in reports following the joint BTP / Transport for London (TfL) "Report it to stop it" campaign, which heightened awareness and increased victim confidence to report.
BTP has successfully secured a number of prosecutions under the common law offence of ‘outraging public decency’.