Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made a projection of expected rail passenger numbers, as a proportion of pre-pandemic levels, for the next 12 months.

The Department continues to actively work to understand the impact of coronavirus and other factors on rail demand. As part of this we are ensuring that we use a range of rail demand scenarios based on a series of factors that could drive rail demand over the short and long term to influence decisions. These include economic forecasts and behavioural factors. The Department continues to monitor evidence on behaviour changes as a result of the pandemic.

Given the considerable uncertainty that the pandemic has caused, these scenarios cannot be used as forecasts. However, they do reflect some of the possible impacts of the pandemic on future rail demand.