Racism in issuing Penalty Fare Notice

[furlong]

The only person who can adequately explain why they decided to issue penalty fares to some people and not others is the person that issued them.

The company should already be able to justify the different treatment of different members of the group without reference to the individual inspectors - if it can't, it needs to improve its system of recording.

The appeal could include the point about inconsistent treatment apparently in breach of the industry code of practice and natural justice without reference to racism as a possible explanation or with no more than an oblique reference to the races of the people involved (leaving it to be read between the lines).

 

[najaB]

The company should already be able to justify the different treatment of different members of the group without reference to the individual inspectors - if it can't, it needs to improve its system of recording.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on if they record the race of people who they issue penalty fares to (I suspect that they don't). Which would make spotting any trends difficult, or identifying specific instances for that matter.

 

[Haywain]

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on if they record the race of people who they issue penalty fares to (I suspect that they don't). Which would make spotting any trends difficult, or identifying specific instances for that matter.

And, more to the point, whether there is any recording at all of those who are not issued a penalty fare.

 

[talldave]

Does the RPI get a cut of the £100?

 

[AlterEgo]

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on if they record the race of people who they issue penalty fares to (I suspect that they don't). Which would make spotting any trends difficult, or identifying specific instances for that matter.

In this instance they will be able to see the RPI PF'd two people but also sold tickets around the same time and will need to justify that.

 

[najaB]

Does the RPI get a cut of the £100?

Not directly, no.

 

[soil]

In this case one option might be to pay the PF, but then to sue the company under section 29 of the Equality Act on the basis of racial discrimination. You can sue as a small claim (no lawyers) and it is extremely important to claim for injury to feelings, which starts at a minimum of £1200.

See here:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/quantification-of-claims-guidance.pdf

but note that since April 2024 the scales are:

• Lower band: £1,200 to £11,700 (less serious cases)
• Middle band: £11,700 to £35,200 (cases that do not merit an award in the upper band)
• Upper band: £35,200 to £58,700 (the most serious cases).

There is a guide here

https://dglegal.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Discrimination-How-To-Prepare-For-A-Claim-Webinar-Slides.pdf

and see also here:

PRACTICE DIRECTION – PROCEEDINGS UNDER ENACTMENTS RELATING TO EQUALITY – Civil Procedure Rules

www.justice.gov.uk

you can sue online via https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome

Before suing it is important to send a letter before action. Under this you explain to the rail company that you believe you were discriminated against and it is your intention (and indeed your duty) to settle this out of court if possible. Therefore the terms on which this letter would be sent would be that they either pay you your asked for sum to settle the claim or respond with an adequate explanation (which might lead to you dropping the case) WITHIN 14 days. If they don't respond, you sue them without further response. For a claim between £1500 and £3000, the issue fee is £115.

In this case, I would suggest that it's certainly in the lower band, BUT £1,200 would not be an adequate sum, because the apparent discrimination - charging some people £100 penalty fares versus others nothing, purely because they think they are East Asian and therefore more likely to pay and not make a fuss - is wildly and disgustingly discriminatory, so £1,200 would not be enough to send a message for the racial discrimination in question. Therefore you would want to ask for a larger sum, and make clear the effect that it's had on you.

In reference to previous posters it obviously isn't relevant that different inspectors handled the PFs, given that you were all one group, and should have been treated the same way, and saying 'oh you got Grumpy John he always PFs' won't wash - unless they can show there was some grounds to be treated differently.

Note that you don't need evidence to send a letter to court or to issue the claim, but for your claim to be successful if it made it to court you will need to provide evidence as to what happened (albeit that the rail company is also under a duty of disclosure), so you should be able to contact the others in the case and be sure of the facts.

There is a six month time limit for Equality Act cases, so you don't want to leave it too long.

 

[najaB]

In this case one option might be to pay the PF, but then to sue the company under section 29 of the Equality Act on the basis of racial discrimination.

What's the advantage in paying it rather than proceeding with the stage three appeal?

 

[AlbertBeale]

8 days ago, so I have until 1st August to make the final appeal.



The inspectors told us they understood our situation and they would issue a PFN with the price of the ticket ONLY (which is £12.40).
So we all queued to get our PFN, and whilst mine was being printed after giving my details, I realised I was being fined (so my receipt shows £112.40, which is price of the train ticket + fine).
So people before me in the queue weren't issued a fine, same for those behind me.
The other lady was queueing too, and was one of the last ones. I realised she was fined too when I got in the minibus and she approached me to tell me. Until then, I thought I was the only one.

Just re terminology, to save confusion (my confusion, anyway) - if people were only asked to pay for the cost of the ticket (because their contactless wasn't valid), then what they were issued wasn't a Penalty Fare Notice - there was no penalty, just the regular fare. "Punishing" people by adding £100 to the regular ticket price [or £50 if paid promptly] is the Penalty Fare, which is the seemingly discriminatory treatment you received when others were only asked for the regular fare. A PF is the proper procedure where someone has no valid ticket but the inspector accepts it was a mistake and not a deliberate attempt to avoid payment (even then, as you saw, they can choose not to do even that, but just to charge the missing fare); the PF system is a deterrent to stop people being careless ... and it's short of taking someone to court straight away (which is technically possible, since these offences generally don't require intent).

(NB: None of you has been asked to pay "a fine" - that's what happens in court if you're convicted of a criminal offence.)

 

[30907]

What's the advantage in paying it rather than proceeding with the stage three appeal?

There isn't, as there are other possible grounds for appealing.

 

[Fermiboson]

As another East Asian who has had (excuse my French) bull**** thrown at me by railway staff due to me looking like I’m unfamiliar with the network, my advice is to drop it.

Most points have been already well covered by posters above, I think, but to reiterate, the racism even if true is irrelevant to the PF. You committed a criminal offence, even if inadvertently. The PF is valid and only an appeal based on signage, compelling reasons and any potential procedural errors have any chance of removing your liability for the (£50 if paid early) + £11.40.

You could go big and file suit under the EA but I see no chance of such a claim succeeding under a balance of probabilities even just based on the information you have given us here. You could also write an incredibly irate letter to customer support and ruin someone else’s day (because the TI in question is never going to suffer any consequences past an awkward conversation), and they may throw you a complimentary single just to get you to stop talking.

Do **not** include racism allegations in your PF appeal. You want to minimise the amount of things that will make the person reading your appeal annoyed.

I do not make any speculation as to whether the incident was actually one of racism but I note that OP has yet failed to inform us whether the inspector which charged them with a PF sold a ticket to anyone else.

 

[Haywain]

You want to minimise the amount of things that will make the person reading your appeal annoyed.

One would hope that they are dispassionate about these things and just look to see if the appeal provides suitable grounds for being granted. However, I agree that the allegation of unfair treatment* should be excluded as it ("someone else did it and didn't get punished") does not provide a justification for rule/law breaking.


*Whether racism or not, that is what it boils down to. Please don't consider this to be any sort of defence of racist behaviour.

 

[najaB]

I do not make any speculation as to whether the incident was actually one of racism but I note that OP has yet failed to inform us whether the inspector which charged them with a PF sold a ticket to anyone else.

Actually, they have.

There were 3 inspectors and some in the group were served by the one that issued the fine.

The others were only asked to pay the price of the ticket, so discretion were applied to them, and not on me and the lady.

So people before me in the queue weren't issued a fine, same for those behind me.

 

[furlong]

The PF is valid and only an appeal based on signage, compelling reasons and any potential procedural errors have any chance of removing your liability for the (£50 if paid early) + £11.40.

Amongst various other arguments already advanced, the train companies have all undertaken to use discretion "in a consistent and fair way". If the train company is unable to justify the different treatment of different members of the group, then that would provide a compelling reason to uphold an appeal, with or without any element of race and irrespective of which inspector processed which people.

As two appeals have already been decided, it would be helpful to see the reasoning given for rejection, as that should already reveal the objective reasons that the train company gave to the appeals body for actually treating the people differently.

 

[boiledbeans2]

In my opinion, the strongest case would be made by focusing on the one inspector that dealt with you: You want to paint a picture of an inspector that processes a line of people that have arrived together in a group, selling "standard" tickets to a number of people, then handing out a Penalty Fare to an East-Asian woman, then selling a few more standard tickets, then Penalty Faring another East-Asian woman, then selling standard tickets to the rest. Talk with your colleagues to establish exactly in which order you were processed by this particular inspector, so you can decribe the order of events accurately (including the specific number of people handled before, between and after the two of you). [...]

Do the reference numbers of the PFs come out sequentially? I see in post #15 that the OPs PF reference number ends in 583.

If you are able to gather the receipts of your colleagues, and the sequence comes out like this for example:
579: No PF
580: No PF
581: No PF
582: No PF
583: PF (OP)
584: No PF
585: No PF
586: PF (OP's East Asian colleague)

where all the above receipts have identical origin and destination of Waterloo and Virginia Water, showing you were travelling in a group, then perhaps that might make a strong case for discrimination.

 

[AlterEgo]

Do the reference numbers of the PFs come out sequentially? I see in post #15 that the OPs PF reference number ends in 583.

If you are able to gather the receipts of your colleagues, and the sequence comes out like this for example:
579: No PF
580: No PF
581: No PF
582: No PF
583: PF (OP)
584: No PF
585: No PF
586: PF (OP's East Asian colleague)

where all the above receipts have identical origin and destination of Waterloo and Virginia Water, showing you were travelling in a group, then perhaps that might make a strong case for discrimination.

Not all of the OP's colleagues were served by the same RPI.

 

[ssan]

The staff at train stations might be racist. For instance, they tend to check the railcards of East Asian people more frequently and are stricter in dealing with them. Once, when I was on a train with my white friend, the inspector asked only me to show my railcard, even though we were on the same journey and both using 26-30 railcards. My white friends have told me they are rarely asked to show their railcards, whereas my Chinese friends and I are almost always asked. Additionally, in cases where the railcard is expired, they tend to treat East Asians more harshly. This is a form of subtle racism and is difficult to confront.

 

[najaB]

This is a form of subtle racism and is difficult to confront.

If that's been your experience then it's not subtle, it's quite overt.

 

[Tetchytyke]

As two appeals have already been decided, it would be helpful to see the reasoning given for rejection, as that should already reveal the objective reasons that the train company gave to the appeals body for actually treating the people differently.

I completely agree, the text of the rejection letter would be helpful.

It is a long standing legal principle that a body must not “fetter its discretion”, i.e. where a legal discretion exists there should not be an over-rigid application of rules designed to minimise that discretion.

So it’s not enough for the appeal body to say “they can so they did” and shrug their shoulders. It is reasonable for the OP to question why discretion was exercised in favour of their white colleagues and not in favour of themselves and their East Asian colleague. I wouldn’t overtly allege racism but I would point out, in words of one syllable, the ethnicities of the people involved- including the three RPIs.

As an aside, and relevant to some of the previous conversation, it’s a well-known issue that women from minority ethnic backgrounds are often seen as more difficult; the stereotype of the angry black woman. This has the effect that any sort of pushback from a minority ethnic woman is seen as “aggressive” in a way that pushback from a white man often wouldn’t be; this would certainly explain the yelling from the RPI.

If that's been your experience then it's not subtle, it's quite overt.

It’s subtle in that it’s not easily challenged. We’ve seen that on this thread- “the RPI is entitled to use their discretion”.

It certainly follows my experiences working for Durham University and commuting every day from Newcastle to Durham and back. The white Hooray Henry types would often be sold a ticket on board, often with a railcard discount, whereas the Irregular Travel Report was wheeled out for the Arabic and Chinese students. Of course I couldn’t prove the rail staff were racist and I’m sure there was justification, but Occam’s Razor and all that.

 

[Wolfie]

I completely agree, the text of the rejection letter would be helpful.

It is a long standing legal principle that a body must not “fetter its discretion”, i.e. where a legal discretion exists there should not be an over-rigid application of rules designed to minimise that discretion.

So it’s not enough for the appeal body to say “they can so they did” and shrug their shoulders. It is reasonable for the OP to question why discretion was exercised in favour of their white colleagues and not in favour of themselves and their East Asian colleague. I wouldn’t overtly allege racism but I would point out, in words of one syllable, the ethnicities of the people involved- including the three RPIs.

As an aside, and relevant to some of the previous conversation, it’s a well-known issue that women from minority ethnic backgrounds are often seen as more difficult; the stereotype of the angry black woman. This has the effect that any sort of pushback from a minority ethnic woman is seen as “aggressive” in a way that pushback from a white man often wouldn’t be; this would certainly explain the yelling from the RPI.


It’s subtle in that it’s not easily challenged. We’ve seen that on this thread- “the RPI is entitled to use their discretion”.

It certainly follows my experiences working for Durham University and commuting every day from Newcastle to Durham and back. The white Hooray Henry types would often be sold a ticket on board, often with a railcard discount, whereas the Irregular Travel Report was wheeled out for the Arabic and Chinese students. Of course I couldn’t prove the rail staff were racist and I’m sure there was justification, but Occam’s Razor and all that.

My Ghanaian partner has certainly been subjected to the "angry black woman" trope. Add the railway staff's enthusiasm for the "attitude test" and you may well have systemic racism.