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Monday, 10 January, 2000, 19:33 GMT

Tickets please: Fair's fare

The Ł10 penalty fare paid by Cherie Blair for travelling on a train to Luton without a ticket, puts the prime minister's wife in remarkably distinguished company.

It seems that the great and the good are just as able to forget their tickets, miss their stops and inadvertently break the rules as the rest of us.

It may also hearten mere mortals that "revenue inspectors" give no special treatment to those more used to strutting the corridors of power than breaking the fine print of transport regulations.

In July 1999, Tory bigwig and former chancellor Kenneth Clarke turned himself over to London Transport staff at Kennington tube station.

The MP found he had strayed into the "zone two" fare area, while holding a ticket from a pre-paid book valid only in "zone one".

Despite offering to pay the 70p difference, Mr Clarke - who earns around Ł45,000 for his work at Westminster alone - was asked to hand over a Ł10 on-the-spot penalty.

Retired director of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington was also unable to talk her way out of a Ł10 fine, when an eagle-eyed barrier guard spotted that she did not have a valid ticket for an underground journey in 1997.

Dame Stella, the first high-profile spymaster, was making her Ł1.20 trip from her home to London's Charing Cross with a pensioners' travelcard before 9.30am - when the discount ticket is not valid.

Like many of those who fall foul of the rigid regulations governing penalty fares on our buses and trains, Mr Clarke, Dame Stella and Cherie Blair paid their fines with good grace.

The Earl of Clancarty, who had to cough up Ł10 early last year, has been more vocal in his distaste for the penalty system.

The crossbencher condemned the practice of demanding fines from all those who cannot produce a valid ticket as "contemptuous" of customers, in an angry letter to London's Evening Standard newspaper.

He declared it "a cynical moneymaking exercise, which has little to do with catching fare-dodgers".

Fines in London alone generated more than Ł3m for the capital's transport service in the last financial year.

However, again using London Transport as an example, ticket income in the capital rose by some Ł8m in the first year after the company introduced its Ł10 tube and Ł5 bus fines in 1994.

Before the scheme was launched, it was feared fare-dodgers were denying the network as much as Ł30m in unpaid tickets.

The success of penalty fares may be their downfall. In a recent Lords' debate, transport minister Lord Whitty accepted the system did have its problems.

During the same debate, Earl Attlee - a Tory transport spokesman - admitted that he too had been caught out by the penalty fare rules.

A spokesman for Thameslink - the train company which fined Mrs Blair - says that penalty fares exist across the public transport network.

"You are supposed to travel with a valid ticket. If you don't you must pay the penalty as well as the original fare. That applies to all of us," said Martin Walter.

One might have thought Mrs Blair, a well known lawyer and mum-to-be, would have been treated with some sympathy by inspectors at Luton station.

However, strong action has been taken against even more unlikely fare-dodgers.

Last summer, Sister Virtus Okwaraoha was taken to court for going beyond her stop on a London bus.

A nun of the Sisters of the Daughter of Divine Love, Sister Virtus had fallen asleep on the vehicle and was taken a few hundred yards outside the limit of her travelcard.

Unwilling to accept a Ł5 penalty from the nun, London Buses took her before a magistrate over the Ł1 fare.

The nun was given a conditional discharge after pleading guilty, but the court rejected demands that she pay London Buses Ł1 compensation.

Related to this story:
PM's wife fined (10 Jan 00 | UK Politics)
Ex-chancellor fined for Tube 'mistake' (25 Jul 99 | UK)

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