Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to suspend the rollout of new sections of smart motorways until technical problems that have led to the recent suspensions of the Dynac system are fully solved; and what assessment they have made of the safety implications of the outages in this system and the remedial measures put in place on the affected motorways.

The latest safety data shows that, overall, in terms of serious or fatal casualties, smart motorways are the safest roads on the Strategic Road Network. Nonetheless, in January 2022, the Government agreed to take forward all the Transport Select Committee recommendations including pausing all new smart motorway schemes yet to start construction until 5 years of safety and economic data is available. National Highways will only fully open new schemes that have been already in construction when they have successfully completed a number of stages of testing to ensure the scheme is ready to operate safely.

In addition, National Highways has robust and well-rehearsed mitigation measures to deal with different types of operational challenges (including outages). These measures help to ensure the safety of all road users. They include increased traffic officer patrolling and CCTV monitoring on the network.