Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he has taken to ensure that (a) the rail industry is ready for the timetable changes due to be implemented on 9 December 2018 and (b) those changes will be delivered without adverse effects on passengers.

At the Department’s request, Andrew Haines (Network Rail CEO) led industry in reviewing plans for the December 2018 timetable in light of the disruption seen in May 2018. The rail industry advised reductions in the scale of the planned changes for the December 2018 timetable, specifically to reduce the risk of disruption for passengers.

In addition, the rail industry has put in place additional assurance processes to test that plans for delivery of the timetable are robust and the Secretary of State has received on-going assurance from industry leaders on its readiness for the implementation of timetable change on 09 December 2018.