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No fares penalty 'protects cheats'
Page 24
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THE CONFEDERATION of British Road Passenger Transport has reacted angrily to the death of the penalty fares amendment to the Transport Bill.
In a newsletter to its members, it criticises the "narrow conservatism" of many Labour and some Conservative MPs who supported Tory Ronald Bell's amendment omitting the penalty fares clause last week.
It had been intended that operators could charge passengers caught over-riding with an excess fare — not a fine, as CPT and others stress — of five times the ordinary fare. This follows the success of a pilot scheme in Cardiff (CM April 28).
The CPT newsletter says that dropping of the penalty fare makes justice unjust.
"We are in an era," says CPT, "when it is wrong to protect the honest — that is a privilege reserved for the dishonest_ Society is guilty, not the crook.
"At least Parliament is quite prepared to let society pay for the artful fare dodger — the bus cheat" The confederation intends to carry on with its pressure for penalties, having managed already to win over Transport Minister William Rodgers and shadow minister Norman Fowler.
It concedes now that the amendment may have been lost by CPT gaining support from the top. "We need more grassroots support to exert local electoral pressure on MPs."
The confederation suggests that the next move may be to support a Private Members Bill, but meanwhile has called upon its own members for their help in lobbying MPs.