Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress her Department has made with the Office of Rail and Road and Network Rail on (a) identifying unused track access rights and (b) making underused rail capacity available to open access operators.

Identification and address of unused track access rights is through the robust industry process for maintenance of rights in accordance with the Network Code, applied by the Operators and Network Rail as overseen by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). Open access operators may apply to utilise available capacity alongside operators contracted by Government. It will then be a matter for Network Rail and the ORR to decide through the established systems and processes how capacity should ultimately be allocated.