Plea for touts blitz fails

Tube travellers "have been harassed by touts."

A plea for a legal crackdown on ticket touts at London tube stations has failed, as it had no government backing.

Touts - who harass travellers and cost London Underground a reported £1m a year in lost revenue - would have faced arrest by the police.

Very minor penalties - such as conditional discharges, tiny fines - for repeat offenders are absolutely no deterrent whatsoever

Neil Gerrard

Labour's Neil Gerrard made an attempt to change London Underground bye-laws and incorporate them into law to discourage touts.

At present, police have no power to arrest the touts.

Mr Gerrard said travellers have been harassed, threatened and even assaulted by touts.

However, without government backing, his Ticket Touting (London Underground) Bill stands no chance of becoming law.

Harassment

Mr Gerrard said touts are a common sight in many London stations.

But a survey of tube passengers found most did not consider ticket-touting to be a crime, with many saying they would give away tickets they had finished with to touts

But Mr Gerrard said he had seen one woman trying to buy a ticket from a machine be surrounded by touts all demanding she buy it from them.

The owner of a newsstand had been threatened with a knife after she asked them to move away from her stall, he said.

"It can be a very threatening experience for passengers in that situation."

Bye-laws

And he warned that the legal penalties available failed to make much impact.

"Very minor penalties - such as conditional discharges, tiny fines - for repeat offenders are absolutely no deterrent whatsoever.

"What we do need is for the police to have the power of arrest so that it is much simpler and easier for them to deal with the problem ...

"I believe it would be useful if the London Underground bye-law provisions were in some way amended and brought into statute law and that would be the purpose of the bill."

The government should allow police to stop and search people they suspected had aerosol cans to use for graffiti, a former leading police chief has urged.

The former president of the Police Superintendents Association, Labour's Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, suggested the move to counter the problem of graffiti on buildings.