Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of undisputed invoices his Department, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies paid within five days in the last period for which figures are available.

The information for the Department for Transport and its agency bodies, together with further details, is available on the Government website at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prompt-payment-statistics

Network Rail became an arms-length body of the Department on 1 September 2014. Therefore, the first time that Network Rail published prompt payment information against the 5 day target was in February 2015. The last period for which information is available is for period 11 (a 4 week period ending 31 January 2015), during which period 11% of invoices were paid within 5 days. Following reclassification of the organisation to the public sector, Network Rail is working to improve on this figure and the effects should start to become evident when period 12 information is published.