Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to proposed Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects relating to his Department, in respect of how many of those projects the Planning Inspectorate's Examining Authority recommended that he should withhold consent; and how many times his Department rejected those recommendations in (a) 2015, (b) 2016, (c) 2017, (d) 2018, (e) 2019, (f) 2020 and (g) 2021.

Since 2015, the Examining Authority has recommended withholding consent from five Development Consent Orders for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects in the transport sector; in all five cases, the Secretary of State rejected those recommendations. The Secretary of State made one of these decisions in 2016, three in 2020, and one in 2021.