Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of staffing reductions on levels of reported crime on trains.

The Department works with the British Transport Police (BTP) to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour on the railways in Great Britain. Under their franchise agreements, Train Operating Companies are required to work with the BTP to manage and reduce railway crime. British Transport Police officer numbers have remained relatively stable on the network over the last five years and are currently (2017/18) nearly 3,100 by comparison to just over 2,900 in 2009/10.

With growing passenger numbers, the Department has been clear that it wants to see more train operating company customer-facing staff on the railways, not fewer.

The BTP keeps records of crime reported on the railways. Crime figures should be considered in the context of rising passenger numbers, with crimes per million passenger journeys remaining relatively low and having decreased overall between 2014 and 2017.

With regard to factors influencing the levels of report crime on trains, the BTP has run a number of successful initiatives in recent years to encourage more reporting of crimes, which is likely to be a factor in the numbers of crimes reported. For example, BTP has a popular dedicated crime reporting text service - ‘61016’ – which allows people to report offences to the police easily and discreetly.

The levels of crime that are seen on the railway broadly mirror those seen across society as a whole, as recorded by the territorial police forces.

A recent report by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) concluded that driver controlled train operation by comparison with conductor operation does not increase passenger safety risks.