Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of variations in CCTV quality, coverage and functionality across train operating companies and rail infrastructure providers.

The railway is a CCTV-rich environment, with over 125,000 cameras across the network. CCTV systems are owned and managed by individual train operating companies and Network Rail, and the Department does not hold a centralised dataset on variations in quality, coverage or functionality.

The Department is working with the rail industry to improve the consistency and effectiveness of CCTV through multiple initiatives. These include the recently published Visual Safety and Security Systems strategy, and a £17 million programme to connect station CCTV to the British Transport Police, enabling greater real-time access to footage across the network.