Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what are their estimates for each of the past five years of the amount of money lost to rail companies by ticket fraud and evasion; and what measures they plan to implement to reduce this.

The Government takes the issue of fare evasion and fraud very seriously. We currently do not hold estimates for the amount of money lost to railway fraud, however in 2023 the Rail Delivery Group estimated that in a normal year, approximately £240 million is lost through fare evasion on Great Britain's railways.

To reduce fare evasion, in January 2023 we increased the value of the penalty fare to £100, plus the price of the single fare to the intended destination. DfT operators are also contractually incentivised to reduce ticketless travel on their network.