Local authorities could be empowered to give out £100 fines to ‘loudcasters’ on buses. We hear the case for and against in this week’s Debate
YES: Forget £100, Londoners want headphone dodgers fined a grand
If Wetherspoons can ban headphone dodgers, then so should TfL. Polling has shown that eight out of 10 Londoners are bothered by ‘bare beating’ (as this anti-social phenomenon is known) and half of those fear it is on the rise.
If anything, the government’s plans do not go far enough. Two thirds of Londoners think that headphone dodgers should face fines of £1,000 – not the paltry £100 proposed in the latest measures.
Moreover, fines alone will not solve the problem. Penalties to tackle ‘bare beating’ on trains and Tubes have existed since 2005 but have failed to make a dent in this very public nuisance. Why? Because there is nobody there to enforce these rules or impose the fines. Without real enforcement – more police or dedicated security staff deployed on buses – these fines are potentially meaningless.
Nor should we place bus drivers in the firing line. Given that between 2024 and 2025 assaults on bus drivers tripled, asking them to step out of their cab to act as ‘bus bouncers’ is only likely to leave them more exposed to violence.
The government is right to recognise that anti-social behaviour on our transport network is on the rise. Whether it is bare beating, fare evasion or vandalism, passengers are witnessing it more and more frequently. A new regime of fines may generate headlines, but without the boots on the ground to back it up, these measures are toothless. Should bare beaters be fined? Yes! Will they is a different matter.
James Ford is a former adviser to Mayor of London Boris Johnson, specialising in transport
NO: Who will enforce the system?
In an ideal world, people wouldn’t play music out loud on buses because it’s rude and inconsiderate. This is not an ideal world, which is why we have laws: to regulate collective behaviour within agreed norms.
It’s also unlikely that loud music on public transport will be music I would have chosen, but I’m nearly 49 years old and not many Joni Mitchell or Paul Brady fans are cranking up the bass on the 202 to Blackheath.
The criminal law is not a panacea. The government intends to allow local authorities to impose fines of up to £100 for playing music out loud on buses. Who will enforce this system? An unenforced ban could lead to potentially dangerous confrontations between members of the public.
We have a test case. Since 2005, railway and TfL byelaws have prohibited the “use [of] any instrument, article or equipment for the production or reproduction of sound” if it is “to the annoyance of any person”. Breaching those byelaws is a criminal offence. Have you heard music on a train or Tube in the past 21 years? I suspect you have.
I used to work in the House of Commons Public Bill Office. I’ve seen Acts of Parliament close up, and there is something corrosive about unenforced (and unenforceable) laws. They raise expectations then disappoint. If loud music on buses is annoying, imagine if it was illegal but continued unchecked: public trust eroded, the police are powerless, broken Britain.
If you introduce a legal remedy and the mischief is not addressed, something has gone wrong. If I believed that, this time next year, people playing music on buses would be a thing of the past, I would be four-square behind the government. But it is a symptom. General improvement by the aggregation of marginal gains can be possible. But we are facing a much broader challenge concerning respect, responsibility and consequences, and we need to think bigger.
Eliot Wilson is a writer and historian
THE VERDICT
As part of a new crackdown on antisocial behaviour on public transport, the government has announced plans to empower local authorities to issue £100 fines for anyone playing loud music on buses in England, along with a reinforced rail campaign to encourage people to “share the carriage, not the noise”. It’s a popular message amid increasing frustration towards so-called ‘loudcasting’. But while few are in doubt that the practice is annoying (certainly neither of our debaters dispute that), making it a finable offence feels not only unlikely to yield significant results (again agreed on by both camps), but also unlikely to actually better social cohesion on public transport. As a handful of heartwarming stories on X betell, there is an alternate way to get people to stop playing music on buses: by politely asking them to stop. Certainly, some offenders are beyond shame, but generally Brits are an easily embarrassed breed. Bans are blunt instruments, suitable for places like Singapore maybe, but in London it feels unfashionably doctrinaire.