The transport secretary has ruled out installing airport-style security scanners in stations, following an alleged stabbing attack on a train on Saturday evening.
Speaking to Mornings with Ridge and Frost on Sky News on Monday, Heidi Alexander said the government did not want to make “life impossible for everyone”.
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, has called for “tough and radical action” to tackle knife crime, including rolling out live facial recognition technology in town centres and train stations.
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The questions around security on public transport comes after 10 people were injured in an alleged mass stabbing attack on a high-speed train on Saturday, and a train staff member – hailed as a hero for confronting the attacker – remains in a critical but stable condition.
A 32-year-old man from Peterborough has been charged with 11 counts of attempted murder following the attack on the Doncaster to London King’s Cross LNER service near Huntingdon, and another at a station on London’s Docklands Light Railway (DLR), early on Saturday morning.
Asked by Mornings presenter Sophy Ridge if airport-style scanners should be installed at railway stations to ensure public safety on trains, the transport secretary replied: “I don’t think airport-style scanners would be the way to go.
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“I understand why you asked the question, and I understand why some of your viewers might be wondering about that.
“We have thousands of railway stations across the UK, and those stations have multiple entrances, multiple platforms. So what we can’t do is make life impossible for everyone.
“But we do need to take sensible and proportionate steps to make the public transport network safe.”
She also said there will be increased “visible” police patrols at train stations for “the next few days” to provide reassurance to the travelling public.
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Ms Alexander went on to say that, while she does not want to minimise the “horrific” attack on Saturday, the trains in the UK are “some of the most safest [sic] forms of public transport anywhere in the world”, saying that for every million journeys, there are 27 crimes committed.
She added: “For me, one crime is one crime too many. So we will, after this, review all of our security measures, because that is the right thing to do.”
But Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Mornings with Ridge and Frost that there needs to be more “surge hotspot policing in high crime areas” to tackle knife crime, and the use of “live facial recognition to identify wanted criminals as they wander round, including as they go to train stations, so they can be arrested”.
“We also need more stop and search as well because stop and search takes knives off the streets,” he added.
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Last week, the government released new data showing that knife homicides have fallen by 18% in a year, while knife crime overall has dropped by 5% – the first reduction in four years.
The Home Office attributed that to the use of hotspot patrols, knife arches that can detect knives in environments like schools, drones, and plain clothes officers, as well as partnerships with campaigners and charities.
