Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many fines have been issued to passengers on public transport for travelling without a face covering; and whether his Department has collated data on the ethnicity of people issued with those fines.

Our initial approach to enforcement of face coverings on public transport in England has been to encourage compliance through communications. Operators, police, BTP and TFL continue to engage passengers on this new regulation.

As at 6 July BTP has issued 20 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) for Face Covering Regulations on the rail and underground networks. To date TfL has not issued any penalty notices, and the National Police Chiefs’ Council is due to report its figures on FPNs shortly.

In the coming weeks we will be working with TfL, BTP and the police to monitor breakdown of ethnicity of those issued with penalty notices.