Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the public purse of nationalising Greater Anglia.
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 Greater Anglia 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.