Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of proposed rail fares for 2024-25; and if he will take steps to ensure fares do not rise further.

The Government is continuing to support passengers with cost-of-living pressures with another significant intervention on rail fares, capping increases at 4.9 per cent, significantly below the July 2023 Retail Prices Index (RPI) figure of 9 per cent, which has historically been used to calculate fares changes.

The lower fare cap comes after the Government delivered its target to halve inflation by the end of the year.

This year’s increase builds on last year’s unprecedented intervention, which saw the Government cap the increase for 2023 at 6.4 percentage points lower than the 2022 July RPI figure. This means the Government will have helped keep ticket prices more than 9 per cent lower than what passengers would have paid if rises matched the RPI benchmark in the last two years.