Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to pages 89-90 of the Williams-Shapps plan for rail, if he will provide an update on the steps taken by his Department to strengthen the contribution of the railways to the nation’s green recovery.

As part of the Plan for Rail, we will invest to radically reform and improve passengers’ experience of fares, ticketing and retailing on the railways. We have delivered on these commitments, extending single-leg pricing on the LNER network from June, and committing to extending contactless pay as you go ticketing to 53 stations in the Southeast and working to agree pay as you go pilots in the North by the end of the year. Since 2021, we have sold over 850,000 new flexible season tickets to support commuters’ return to rail following the pandemic and will continue to protect passengers from cost of living pressures by not increasing next year’s rail fares by as much as the July RPI figure.