Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what his policy is on maintaining domestic coal supplies for the heritage rail sector.

In line with our Net Zero target, the Government is committed to phasing out unabated coal-fired electricity generation by 2025, and recently consulted on moving this date forward to 2024. This policy applies to coal-fired power stations only – it does not apply to other coal consumers such as heritage railways.

Although coal will soon no longer be part of our electricity system, it will continue to be used as a fuel by a wide range of other industries such as the iron, steel and cement industries. We are confident that heritage railways will continue to have the option to tap into this significant domestic market. The decision on where to source coal for use in heritage railways and other industries is a private matter for the companies involved