Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will require the highest levels of consumer data protection in his forthcoming Great British Railways Retailing Phase tender document, to ensure future GBR customers are not subject to their data being collected by any bidding company.

The Department will seek to ensure that any successful bidder for a future procurement is not able to exploit customer data to suit its own commercial ends. We expect our delivery partners, including in the future Great British Railways, to demonstrate how they would comply with the relevant data collection requirements, including the 2018 Data Protection Act, General Data Protection Regulation and the Information Commissioner’s Office regulations. The Department does not, however, recognise the document referred to in this question.