Railways: Gender Based Violence
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to help reduce the number of violent attacks on women and girls on rail services.
Answered by Simon Lightwood
This government has set out its mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade and will treat this work as a national emergency.
No one should ever have to face the risk of violence or harassment when travelling on our transport networks.
We are taking action to make sure women and girls in particular feel safe on our transport network. We work closely with railway partners, including the British Transport Police (BTP), to achieve this. BTP utilises specialist teams of plain clothed and uniformed officers across the network to target and identify offenders. It uses enhanced patrols, with a directed, intelligence-led focus around the nighttime economy, providing high-visibility presence to reassure rail staff and the public.
Current public campaigns and support tools include the National Rail ‘Zero Tolerance’ campaign aimed at ending sexual harassment and BTP’s Railway Guardian app, which provides safety advice, links to partner organisations and enables reporting of incidents to the force directly. Previous public awareness campaigns have included using real victim stories to encourage more members of the public to come forward and report incidents of sexual harassment to the force.
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