Wearing no face mask on the Tube should be a criminal offence, Sadiq Khan says
Sadiq Khan has said travelling on the London Underground without wearing a face mask should be made a criminal offence.
Currently Transport for London (TfL) requires passengers to wear a covering as a ‘condition of carriage’.
It means staff can tell customers who disobey to get off the train or bus, but they cannot issue fines.
However, the Mayor of London has been pushing for the Government to allow the transport body to impose a by-law making face masks mandatory.
Speaking to the BBC’s Newscast podcast, Khan said: ‘We are trying to lobby the Government to allow us to bring in a by-law, so it will be the law again, so we can issue fixed penalty notices and we can use the police service and BTP to enforce this.
‘We need people to be coming back to the West End. We want to encourage people to return to their offices. They are not going to do so if they don’t feel public transport is safe.
‘I’m hoping the Government understands, on the issue of public safety and public confidence, we want to be able to use the law to make sure people do wear face masks in spaces where you can’t keep your social distance for obvious reasons.’
The final stages of lockdown restrictions in England were lifted on July 19, including the end of social distancing and mandatory mask wearing inside public places.
However in the face of rising infections and hospitalisations, some councils and businesses decided to keep certain rules in place for safety reasons.
In a statement, the Mayor of London’s office said masks would still be required on public transport as an ‘extra layer of protection and additional reassurance to Londoners and visitors’.
It added: ‘Sadiq’s decision to do this follows his repeated calls on the Government to retain the existing national legal requirement for face coverings on public transport as one in three people who have Covid do not display symptoms, and Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) evidence states that face coverings are likely to be most effective in reducing transmission indoors where social distancing is not feasible.
‘The World Health Organisation has urged that even double-vaccinated people should continue to wear face coverings in view of highly contagious variants such as Delta.’
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