Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of creating a criminal offence of assaulting a public transport worker.

There is no place for abuse or assault of any worker. Public transport workers and the wider public should be assured that where offenders commit acts of violence they will be arrested and brought before the courts quickly and that the British Transport Police have a specific remit to protect all rail staff and passengers.

Public transport workers do of course already have extensive protection in existing legislation such as the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 which also covers more serious violence such as actual bodily harm (ABH) and grievous bodily harm (GBH), and courts must already consider offences against public facing workers as an aggravating factor under the Police Crime and Sentencing Act 2022. We therefore do not believe that creating a specific offence will have the intended purpose of reducing assaults.