Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will make it his policy to require Network Rail to record the (a) number and (b) location of every tree removed from its land.

Network Rail manages a vast estate, with an estimated six million trees, and approximately 23% woodland coverage, substantially higher than the average woodland coverage across Britain.

The Secretary of state does not plan to require Network Rail to record the number and location of every tree removed from its land.

For the Hon Member’s information, in 2019, Network Rail pledged £1m to plant new trees across England over a four-year period, with over 80,000 already planted in the first planting season and published its Biodiversity Action Plan in December 2020: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Network-Rail-Biodiversity-Action-Plan.pdf