Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the (a) resilience of Network Rail’s signalling infrastructure and (b) the potential for failure of that infrastructure to affect passengers.

As part of Network Rail’s latest settlement (Control Period 6) Government has committed to continue record levels of investment in rail infrastructure, providing around £48bn of funding across the five-year period spanning from 2019 to 2024. This funding settlement is focussed on maintaining and improving rail infrastructure assets including signals, and includes major programmes of signalling upgrades which will increase resilience. This will help support a more reliable railway for passengers by reducing the instances of failures which affect passengers. This includes Network rail’s recognition within the CP6 delivery plan that digital signalling renewals are a priority. Network Rail have published their Long-Term Deployment Plan for digital signalling as part of the Digital Railway transformation