But it also contains a proposal that will have serious consequences for everyone.

Transport secretary Chris Grayling wants to phase out rail tickets and force us to pay for our journeys instead via mobile phones and contactless cards.

Over the next few weeks Chiltern Railways is to begin trials of a system where passengers would load their credit card details onto a smartphone app, which would then automatically deduct the cost of their journey from their bank account.

By the end of 2018 all train operators have been told to offer similar ticketless systems, followed eventually by the abolition of all rail tickets. 

It all sounds wonderful, of course. The technology will theoretically allow us to walk straight onto a train without having to queue up at a ticket office or machine.

The system to be used on Chiltern Railways will supposedly give us “confidence that we will be charged the correct fare”.

That is the theory, but we know what to expect in practice.

Three years ago the Highways Agency removed toll booths on the Dartford Crossing between Kent and Essex and made motorists pay by phone or online instead.

That, too, was supposed to make our lives easier – but not for the 3.5million people who have received fines of £70 because they didn’t understand the system or couldn’t access the internet within the 24 hours allowed for payment.

And look at parking. Until recently, paying to park a car was simple.

 You went to a machine, put in a few coins and out popped a ticket that you put on your windscreen to show that you had paid.

Now, the cash machines are being ripped out and motorists are being forced to pay via mobile phone – if you can get reception.

It has become a goldmine for councils who fine people who wrongly enter a single digit of their registration number.

You can bet that ticketless rail travel will be the same.

Even if you succeed in using the smartphone app you won’t know how much you have really been charged for your journey until the money has actually been deducted from your bank account.

Good luck in trying to get the money back if you have been charged for a full fare when you were sure you were taking an off-peak train.

At least with a ticket machine you know exactly how much you will be charged before you press the button.

What happens if, as happens to me all the time, your smartphone runs out of charge before your train reaches its destination?

We know how predatory ticket inspectors can be if you get on the wrong train by mistake – in future you can be sure they will be merrily handing out huge fines to people who were trying to pay their fare but whose batteries ran flat.

It hasn’t seemed to occur to the Government that many people don’t even have smartphones and would struggle to use them because of failing eyesight or because arthritis makes it impossible for them to use the fiddly little keys.

Among the over-65s only 18 per cent own a smartphone. Hard though it might be for Ministers to understand, one in 10 Britons has never even used the internet.

Abolishing rail tickets is a typical example of what the Government calls its “digital first” strategy.

It wants us to do everything online, all the time, not because it is always more convenient for us but because it makes Ministers feel they are being modern and because it makes money for the many technology firms that have lobbied the Government on the issue.

It is just the same as with forcing people to claim Universal Credit online, when surely it is obvious that many people who are unemployed or sick don’t have iPhones or iPads.

Much of this policy seems to be dreamed up by young graduates in good health who spend all their time in cities with good WiFi coverage.

They seem to have no inkling that many people struggle with computers, either because they find them hard to understand, because they have physical disabilities or because they live in remote areas with poor broadband and mobile phone coverage.

We keep hearing the Government say it is tackling social disadvantage, but all that seems to go out of the window when it comes to the digital first strategy.

Of course it is good that we can do things online. I don’t want to go back to the days when I had to join a huge queue in the Post Office on the last Saturday of the month in order to renew my car tax disc. I like being able to bank, book a holiday and yes, buy a rail ticket, online.

But I don’t want it to be the only way of doing these things.

Ministers are good at boasting about IT, but it can’t hide the fact of just how bad a record they have of delivering IT systems.

Remember the fiasco of Tony Blair’s great IT system for the NHS, which ended up being abandoned after costing taxpayers upwards of £10billion?

I wouldn’t be surprised if just as much money goes down the drain on a ticketless rail system that turns out not to work properly. What is wrong with keeping the option of buying a physical rail ticket? Rail tickets have worked fine for the best part of two centuries.

There is no reason to abolish them now.

• Ross Clark’s book The War Against Cash is published by Harriman House at £12.99.