Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of (a) lost revenue and (b) compensation following the broken rail on the East Coast Mainline on Sunday 21 May.

The industry performance regime allows that all the costs arising from an individual incident can typically only be calculated some time – which can be weeks – after the incident. The performance payments between train operators and Network Rail (accounting for lost revenue and compensation) are made every four weeks and are aggregated, based on average lateness for the previous four-week period. The way the performance regime works means that Network Rail do not calculate payments for individual incidents.