Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, (a) how much his Department has spent and (b) what progress his Department has made on the introduction of smart ticketing technology across the railway in (a) 2016 (b) 2017 and (c) 2018.

In 2017 we set a goal of securing smart ticketing across almost all of our rail network by 2018. As a result of our £80 million investment in smart ticketing nationally and the first phase of the £150m investment in Transport for the North’s multi-modal programme, passengers can now obtain a smart card or barcode ticket across almost all of the rail network.