Mr. Peter Strachan:

I mentioned that we are now looking at the procurement exercise for our next generation ticketing platform. A recollection I have from putting in smart cards when I was in the public transport authority in Brisbane was that the technology moves really quickly. A statistic which is in the public domain and which I do not mind sharing with the committee anyway is that nearly 90% of journeys on Transport for London are either by smart card or contactless. Sometimes we get a picture of the next Leap card in our head, but the way ticketing technology is going, it is much more likely we will go straight to bank card, contactless, mobile phone or other digital delivery channels, rather than the next generation of Leap. Given where the technology is now, we are probably two to three years away from that. One of my roles and one of the board's roles is to accelerate that as much as possible. We should not underestimate the task. Having seen failure of that elsewhere in the world, let us get it right rather than quick.