Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of ensuring that all railways stations are fully accessible to disabled passengers.

Many of our stations date from the Victorian era when accessibility was not considered and, although we have made no detailed assessment of the likely cost, we do not underestimate the scale of the problem. We have therefore continued with the Access for All programme and extended it to 2019. By then more than £500m will have been spent providing an accessible route at over 220 stations and smaller scale access improvements at nearly half of the UK’s stations. In addition, any infrastructure work carried out at stations must meet current UK and EU accessibility standards.