Oh dear, here we go again:I can't see that they, or any other Railway Company, are doing any wrong by "taking advantage" of the very provision which (in its previous incarnation) was produced by the Government-run British Railways so that the Railways can protect themselves against people who "take advantage" of an incomplete barrier to access railway property without paying.
Here, as you say, we go again.
They are "taking advantage" because they have special legislation not open to anyone else except a select band of previously nationalised industries. Similar to utility companies, (who, when privatised, started cutting off people's water instead of properly pursuing them for payment).
Nationalised industries were state employees and so responsible to the taxpayer, who paid their wages. Private rail companies like to show their independence, it seems, although every taxpayer partly contributes to their wages.
Of course Railway Companies should use the provisions given to them to protect their revenue from the losses that would accrue from those who choose to travel without paying unless challenged! Of course they should "take advantage" of what is given to them to use. Hence the need for a "strict liability". iIt would be irresponsible and possibly negligent not to!
Given the legislation enables the railway companies to be in effect judge and jury in their own court and where no internal appeals appeals are independent, it is a pity that they, rather than being "not irresponsible" are not themselves rather more responsible. They are neither transparent nor consistent, indeed they are possibly negligent too!
In short I consider some rail companies do not exhibit adequate responsibility to be granted the right to use such privileged 'strict liability' legislation.
I think you must have switched the subject somewhere, because the Railway Byelaws, which carry the "strict liability" you are unhappy with and which are currently in force are younger than some of my clothes and younger than some of the wine I've drunk this week. The current version was written in 2005. Ancient for some, perhaps.
Firstly that wine wasn't drunk on a train unless you brought it with you
(I won't comment on the clothes).
Second the Strategic Rail authority redid the laws - and where are they now? Third that was a rehash of the 60s Byelaws of the
Nationalised British Railways Board - and where are they now?
But I think that Northern Rail (the subject of this thread) are really more reliant on the Regulation of Railways Act, which is the statute which captures those intending to avoid payment. The age of that legislation gives it some robust authority, and perhaps that confused you with its 'ancient' date. But relatively speaking, it isn't that old when compared to the likes of other long standing offences of 'theft', 'murder', 'nuisance', 'trespass', ''assault', fraud', 'forgery', 'rape', 'negligence' etc. Their long history gives these offences some clout. We can update laws (and some recent governments seem to have done so almost obsessively), which I don't have much enthusiasm for, or, we can allow the older statutes and common law to evolve with real-world circumstances and progressive judgements accumulating the detail and their precision; I find this to be the fairest form of generating jurisprudence.
Northern Rail seem equally happy to work within that framework of evolved jurisprudence and it's dissapointing that you don't share that view. I find that 'old' law which is constantly evolving in the Courts with real world circumstances, is a lot more appropriate than much of the 'new' law which either tries to do more than Statues can do, or expressly leaves the details for the Courts to decide all over again.
Of course there are details which won't always give the desired outcome at first blush, but the people in Northern's Prosecutions team are fully aware of these, and despite your protests, I'm going to have to ask you to identify those actual incidents of an unfair or unjust prosecution by Northen Rail since their introduction of the Failure to Pay scheme, please.
I have no evidence of unjust prosecution by Northern - just lots of evidence of use of sleight of hand tactics to extract monies to prevent a prosecution, which is likely to succeed only if you ignore intent or honest mistakes. To their customers it must seems rather like protection money. Indeed if threads I've read are correct it seems that if an assault is likely no effort is made to prosecute either that or any ticket offence...
Well clearly that is your opinion, and seems unlikely to change. But other views are available.
I see nothing inherently "unfair" in providing the opportunity to remedy a failure to pay for a service taken.
Of course it is not unfair unless there is a valid reason for that failure to pay. But Northern seems to provide no more than a random opportunity
to pay and so lots of valid reasons not to, which they seem to do their best to deny.
I concur with all of the below:
I'd want to send out a consistent message. Northern don't do that and haven't done that for a very very long time.
Pay Trains have been the big thing since at least the 70s in Yorkshire and Lancashire, at one point in the early 90s just about every station in West Yorkshire lost its ticket office. You were supposed to buy on board. Northern are trying to row back from that position and I agree with that.
But they're doing it in a devious and underhanded way, rather than setting up a true penalty fare scheme with all the obligations that brings. The government set up rules about penalty fares and Northern have just chosen to ignore every single last one of them. They don't even have an appeal scheme. "Take your chance with the Magistrate, who is bound by strict liability laws" is not an appeal scheme. Passenger Focus have tried their best, finding against Northern several times, but their decisions are not binding.
DaveNewcastle, the age of the Byelaws doesn't stop them being antiquated and unfit for purpose, like much of New Labour's strict liability legislation.
And of course they've now been found to be demonstrably lying about their so called Penalty Fare Scheme. Couldn't ask for finer or more upstanding people really could we?
