To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport what estimate he has made of the level of savings to his Department of the cancellation of the implementation of smart cards. (314281)

The Department for Transport has no plans to cancel the implementation of smartcards and has made no estimates of the savings that this could deliver. Following a consultation in the autumn, we published the Department's first Smart and Integrated Ticketing strategy in December 2009. The strategy has been well received and our research into the business case of implementing smart ticketing schemes is very positive. There are contractual commitments relating to smart ticketing in recent rail franchise agreements which mean that any cancellation would require these agreements to be renegotiated at cost to the taxpayer.