MP Protests over Penalty Fare Abuses

3.23.42pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 25th Jul 2007

Local residents are being put at risk of a criminal record, as a result of being caught without a ticket when they set off from a station where the ticket office is closed, the automatic ticket machine is out of service and there is no Permit to Travel machine.

Vincent Cable MP has taken up the case of a Twickenham resident who left from Strawberry Hill unable to obtain a ticket, when she was stopped later in her journey - at East Grinstead, on Southern Railway - and disputed the fare, the police were called arriving with flashing lights to make an arrest. The Penalty Fares Appeal Service subsequently dismissed her appeal and she now faces criminal charges if she were to face another penalty fare. In the course of correspondence, it has emerged that passengers are expected to find a guard on the train if they cannot obtain a ticket at the start of the journey. But guards are often not easily contactable, especially on packed, peak hour trains.

Vincent Cable said: "The rail companies are being greedy and unreasonable. They demand that passengers obtain tickets before they set off but in many cases there are no functioning offices or machines, or queues are very long. SW Trains say passengers without a ticket and unable to obtain one at the ticket office should approach a guard. But a confidential memo leaked from SW Trains (to The Times) three weeks ago says that guards should fine passengers without a ticket, even if they ask to buy one, and guards are being given bonuses depending on the fines they collect. I have asked the rail companies to justify their behaviour, and the fare appeals body to explain their pathetic response. What we see here is a gross abuse of their monopoly position by the rail companies."