Banks are privately owned - should fraud against them be civil law? Insurance companies? Pension providers? Where do you draw the line?
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Should Railway Offences get a Criminal Record?
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And you think shoving a microphone/mobile phone in somebody's face is going to help do you, especially when 90% of the time the person without the ticket has walked past an opportunity to pay before boarding the train. :roll:
How often do you believe this happens currently? You certainly seem to be implying that railway staff committing perjury is a common enough occurrence for it to warrant taking protection against.
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I think that no-one acting in good faith (even when legally in the wrong) should ever be a victim of dishonesty.
If one is making an honest and fair attempt to pay then one should create (if possible) evidence of doing that. And if it is later misrepresented that one did not make an honest and fair attempt then the misrepresenting or purposely misleading malfeasant should be brought to justice.
If, on the other hand, everyone is acting in good faith then the recording will serve little to no useful purpose, but on the other hand it came at no cost, so there is no loss.
I'm not saying that making a good faith, but too late, attempt to pay exonerates the insufficiently ticket traveller. I am saying that a writing clearly misleading and damning report is a crime in and of itself.
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The line is drawn between harm to the public, to society, versus harm to an individual or company (unless the company is government owned or the individual is a public servant acting in the course of duty). That is the essential difference between a publically owned railway and a commercial railway.
Passing a bad cheque - private damage, civil matter. Holding up a bank clerk at gunpoint - public damage, criminal matter.
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cf111
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I don't believe you can commit perjury unless you lie under oath or after taking an affirmation - would the offence not be attempting to pervert the course of justice?
I really do find the English/Welsh system very alien, the situation of a private company taking people through the criminal courts in Scotland with all that entails would never arise because only the Lord Advocate (via his Deputes and the local Procurator Fiscal) can realistically present a prosecution to a Scottish court.
You still haven't answered my question - how often do you believe this to be the case? How often do you believe that railway people deliberately enter false reports in order to convict innocent people of offences that they haven't committed?
Many (most?) TOCs are supported by the Government through subsidies - the DfT makes up any shortfall in revenue. So fare evasion steals from the public purse.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
If railway staff were given incentives to catch fare dodgers then I would consider this a very real risk. We have seen this with parking attendants. And look what happened to clamping.
Bit of an aside but the simplest catching I ever saw was a clearly marked clamping van on a very small plot of land. I watched some fool park right next to the van and walk off. The clamp was on before their car was out of sight. Comparable with climbing over a ticket barrier when you have money for a ticket and an open ticket office - but then add in (for arguments sake) a long queue and an imminent train.
Of course, clamping was a purely private civil matter and so had a much lower burden of proof. It was basically a licence to print money, unlike criminal cases which are evaluated by a magistrate.
bb21
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You make it sound so easy.
A claims to have heard it from B and C, B claims to have heard it from A and C, C claims to have heard it from A and B.
Good luck sorting that one out.
When you're incorrectly clamped by the government, you get £300 in compensation for the stress, enforced by an independent ombudsman.
When a Paddington gateline staffer incorrectly deny you access to the platform you get threatening emails.
When Northern incorrectly charge you for a peak time ticket when you had a valid ticket you get a long argument (although the average punter will simply pay for the unneeded ticket based on the threat of legal action), what happens?
When Northern incorrectly charge you for breaking a journey when you had a valid ticket you get a long argument (although the average punter will simply pay for the unneeded ticket based on the threat of legal action), what happens?
When 4 different railway staff and the Independent Appeals Service accuses you of travelling without a ticket before realising they cocked up and you had a valid ticket, what happens?
When the railways "lets you off this time" despite you having a valid ticket?
When you get lost leaving victoria station and end up in a carpark?
Where is the independent authority that defends the thousands of innocent rail passengers who are stolen from every day?
bb21
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Thousands?
What does any of that have to do with railway offences carrying a criminal penalty?
Don't count on it. It's a criminal offence to exit a station where ticket gates are in operation without permission from an authorised person otherwise than by passing through the gates in the proper manner.
Surely passing through the gates with a valid ticket constitutes passing through them in the correct manner?
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Perhaps its not malicious, perhaps its just incompetence. Then again such 'one off mistakes' are made at an alarming frequency. We see it frequently on this forum. Furthermore of the three occasions I've had the pleasure of speaking with Northern's fluorescent army (so 100%) all have been a result of inspectors recording false information. I accept that we're all human and mistakes occasionally happen, but the fact some seem to go out of their way to make such mistakes (after all they could just listen to what I say and record it accurately) might lead one to assume there's more to it than a mere mistake, especially where incentives for are offered for picking up fare evaders (be they formal targets or informal banter among staff 'oh you only managed to collar six today... You haven't been working very hard have you?')
I guess my point is it would be incredibly naive and foolish to think that an inspector's report is gospel truth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is not. The misperceptions held by some on this forum that anyone accused of fare dodging is de facto guilty of such a crime based solely on the testimony of an inspector whose report might be inaccurate or fundamentally wrong demonstrates an incredible lack of understanding about how things operate on the ground.
Of course revenue inspectors do a great job at tackling fare evasion, but from my experience they are certainly not infallible and dare I say some (of the third-party contractor variety) seem to go out of their way to manufacture irregularities.
I don't know which it is, just thought it was interesting that Holly thinks it's necessary to record all interactions with RPIs to avoid facing prosecution on the back of "clearly misleading and damning report
That's exactly my point! They know Northern-style tactics will not work. So, instead, they do a good job of collecting revenue. This should be the case across the whole of the UK
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
There are many, many things that are more sensible north of the border. The way ScotRail is run (as a whole, not just its legal framework) is but one of them.
DaveNewcastle
Established Member
How can we observe this fantasy other world?
I'd just like to clarify a popular, but imprecise, perception of private prosecutions in Scotland :-
The number 'two' crops up in a few contexts, but in fact there have been many.
First, there were just two 'private prosecutions' brought by private individuals:
X v Sweeney in 1982 (rape); J & P Coats Ltd v Brown in 1909 (a Fraud prosecuted as a civil action against Brown at the suggestion of the Lord Advocate.) Jury trials do require the permission of the Lord Advocate but where that is refused, a request to the High Court may be petitioned.
And then, at the time of writing a comprehensive and scholarly review of the matter in a recent edition of the Journal of Comparative Law, it was noted that at that moment, there were two cases in which private individuals were considering bringing a private prosecution after a refusal by the Procurator: one in respect of child abuse on the Isle of Lewis (2005) and the other in respect of former police officer Shirley McKie after being falsely accused of perjury (2006).
In terms of private prosecutions on the railways for ticketing and fare irregularities, there were two in the 20th cent.:
British Railways Board v Dick in 1962 in which, on Appeal, the evidence of just one witness was allowed, as laid down in the RCC(Scot)A S.137; and then,
Gerber v British Railways Board in 1969 in which the evidence of just one witness was NOT allowed, as required by the Common Law of Scotland, reversing the finding in BRB v Dick.
There have not been many applications to the Courts for a Private Prosecution since then, but in the sense of 'private prosecutions' as used in England & Wales, where an offence can be prosecuted by an agency or body empowered to do so (such as the wildlife protection societies, the local authorities, the copyright royalty collection agencies, H&S Executive, etc), then the position in Scotland is no different. The role of the public prosecutor in Scotland is simply to ensure that the offender doesn't suffer a 'double jeopardy' from two prosecution for the same offence (one private, one public). [Scottish Book of Regulations S.19.39].
There was a famous application in respect of the alleged obscenity in Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" in McBain v Crichton back in 1961 which the Lord Advocate refused, and which seems to have fuelled the myth that they were almost impossible.
Even the Lord Advocate has perpetrated this befuddled view that there have only been two in his own public statements. He, and others, refer to the right vested in the Lord Advocate to bring prosecutions in Scotland since 1587, regardless of the wishes of the victims.
But in fact, even as recently as 1998, in the Scottish Prosecution Policy Guidance , Book of Regulations S.19.37 Administrative Regulations and Miscellaneous Procedures, it is stipulated that Private Prosecutions may be instigated without the involvement of the Public Prosecutor if: a) it is brought by the victim of a crime (eg a Railway Company); b) by a Public Body empowered with statutory offences (eg a local authority or agency or transport providers); or c) by a land owner and certain other persons for certain statutory offences (eg a charitable society protecting the environment or wildlife).
I see no grounds for Railway Companies to be excluded.
I have actually heard more than two private prosecutions in the High Court in Edinburgh myself over the years; including the sad matter of Gordon Ross who took a private action against the Lord Advocate himself last year, and then a Judicial Review against the decision in December (the Court hasn't reached its decision yet, but Mr Ross died last month, so will take no comfort even if the decision is in his favour). The respected and comprehensive review the Journal of Comparative Law which I've referred to stated that there had been no Judicial Reviews against the public prosecutor.
But since 2015, a victim of crime may now request a review of a decision not to prosecute under S.4 of the 2014 Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act. This will create yet more possibilities for private prosecutions. (The Glasgow 'bin-lorry death' where 6 died in Dec 2014 might have been one but the Lord Advocate's reasoning was there had been insufficient evidence for a public prosecution and that that remained true for a private prosecution.). This reverses the position in which an aggrieved party did not have to be consulted or informed when the public Prosecutor (the Lord Advocate) abandoned a prosecution.
But in most circumstances, it would be true to say that Private Prosecutions are rare in Scotland, or that there were only two private Railway prosecutions in Scotland in the 20th century. But not that there have only been two private prosecutions in Scotland in the 20th century.
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