Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost to the public purse has been of Network Rail paying fines to Govia Thameslink Railway under the Track Access Agreement in the last three years.

The available data for the last three years for Network Rail payments to Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) under the Track Access Agreement (TAA) is available at http://www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/datasets/. This details Schedule 4 payments which relate to agreed disruption caused by planned work; and Schedule 8 payments which relate to non-planned disruption.

The net Schedule 8 payment agreed with individual operators is arrived at through a process of attribution of delays where many factors are taken into consideration and compensation amounts are incurred both ways.

GTR’s provision of services for the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise only began on 14 September 2014, with Southern services included from 26 July 2015, and so will not be included in the 2014/15 figure available at http://www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/datasets/.