Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate she has made of the cost of nationalising South Western Railway.

The exact costs associated with the transfer of a train operator’s services cannot be determined with any certainty at this stage. Each operator will have their own circumstances that need to be addressed to enable a successful transfer.

The process to transfer South Western Railways will involve some mobilisation and due diligence costs, and the transfer programme as a whole will also incur costs, for example, to increase DfT Operator Ltd capacity. However, these costs are expected to be a fraction of the £110-150 million per year in fees to private operators that will no longer have to be funded by the taxpayer once all franchised services are back in public ownership.