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A dramatic crime surge of serious public order incidents on the Tube is revealed today in official documents.

A report paints a picture of increasing low-level violence, pushing and shoving, verbal disputes and threatening behaviour taking place in the morning and afternoon peak times and later in the evenings, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

Serious public order offences increased by 230 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year.

Total notifiable offences increased by 22 per cent in the period from 25 June to 19 September, compared with the same period 12 months ago.

Sexual offences are up seven per cent on the Tube and 44 per cent on London Overground.

Transport for London (TfL) said the figures “part reflects national trends in crime with the latest figures for England and Wales showing an increase in all police-recorded offences of 13 per cent in the 12 months to June with even greater rises for violent offences.”

All forms of transport, with the exception of the bus network, “experienced an increase in the volume of reported crime and a higher rate of crime per million passenger journeys in 2017/18 compared with the previous year.”

The TfL statistics come just 48 hours after it announced the axing up to 1,434 jobs and cutting £3 billion from the Health & Safety budget to reduce overall spending.

Documents reveal:

Serious public order offences from 233 to 768 – up 230 per cent

Robbery 17 to 42 – 147 per cent

Theft of passenger property 1125 to 1387 – 23 per cent

Sexual offences 343 to 367 – 7 per cent

Sexual offences on London Overground 18 to 26 – 44 per cent

Total notifiable offences on the Tube 3318 to 4053 – 22 per cent

Reported drug offences are down 46 per cent, violence against the person down 14 per cent and serious fraud down 51 per cent.

The details are contained in TfL’s Customer & Operation Performance Report, dated today, revealed by Mick Cash, leader of the RMT union.

He said: "These are truly shocking figures. RMT has warned for years that cuts to staff would turn London Underground (LU) into a thugs and criminals paradise and our warnings have now come home to roost with a vengeance.

“Rather than TfL planning for a further 1,400 job cuts in the next tranche of planned reductions passengers need more staff acting as a deterrent and to be on hand to help co-ordinate our response to crime on London’s transport network. The job cuts on LU must be halted and reversed.”

TfL said: “We are addressing these incidents but it remains challenging given the sporadic nature of offences.

“The reporting of sexual offences of the transport system has continued to rise on LU and London Overground.

“This reflects the continuing efforts to tackle unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport.”

It continued: “Increases in recorded crime on LU, Docklands Light Railway and London Overground are primarily driven by rises in reported sexual offences, low-level violence and public order offences and criminal damage.”