Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has any plans to reinstate hard shoulders on smart motorways already in use, following the Government's announcement in January 2022 that the rollout of smart motorways would be paused.

In November 2021, the Transport Select Committee published its Third Report of Session 2021-22 following its inquiry into the rollout and safety of smart motorways. The Committee agreed that the Government was right to focus on upgrading the safety of All Lane Running (ALR) smart motorways rather than reinstating the hard shoulder, which the Committee recognised could put more drivers and passengers at risk of death or serious injury on our roads.

Having carefully considered the Committee’s report, the Department is taking forward all its recommendations. This includes pausing the roll-out of ALR smart motorway schemes yet to commence construction until five years of safety data is available for ALR smart motorways introduced before 2020. We are continuing to act to make sure all existing ALR smart motorways are as safe as possible with over £900m being invested, including for the construction of additional emergency areas and the roll-out of Stopped Vehicle Detection technology across existing ALR motorways.