Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress has he made on decarbonising rail freight.

We are committed to working with industry and the private sector to decarbonise the rail network. We are working with the Great British Railways Transition Team to provide costed options for Government to consider in terms of deliverability and affordability, including options for rail freight.

Electrification is important in our decarbonisation programme. Since 2010, over 1,200 miles of electrification has been delivered in Great Britain, including almost 800 miles in England and Wales since 2016.

The Government is undertaking a number of initiatives to grow rail freight, recognising the environmental benefits it delivers, including setting a long-term rail freight growth target, which will be announced later this year.

We encourage and incentivise modal shift from road to rail by allocating £20m per year to the Mode Shift Revenue Support scheme. In 2022/23, the scheme removed the need for around 900,000 HGV journeys, saving almost 40,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.