Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress his Department and Network Rail have made on meeting the rail industry efficiency targets of the McNulty Report.

Between 2004-14 Network Rail achieved a cumulative improvement in efficiency of around 35-40% on operating, maintaining and renewing its network, as shown in Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) Efficiency and Financial Assessments published for Control Periods 3 and 4.　 The ORR set Network Rail a challenging target of making efficiencies on top of those already achieved of 19.4% for the period 2014-19 (Control Period 5). The evidence base for this target included the McNulty Report as well as a significant amount of top-down benchmarking, bottom-up analysis and studies.

On train services, this Government is focused on maximising value for money for taxpayers and rail users. Since the relaunch of the franchising programme in 2013, each franchise has been subject to a detailed process of scrutiny, ensuring both that the benefits for taxpayers are realised and that the process maximises efficiencies. The success of the process in securing efficiencies of the type envisaged by McNulty is demonstrated by every successful bid achieving a better price than was originally envisaged by the Department, with consequential considerable benefits for the taxpayer.