Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether the 2014 review of Network Rail's enhancement programme carried out jointly by his Department, Network Rail and the Office of Rail and Road was initiated at his Department's request.

By spring 2014, as Network Rail began to develop designs for its enhancements to a greater level of maturity, it identified increases in cost forecasts on some of the major electrification schemes and discussed these forecasts with the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Office of Rail and Roads (ORR).　Very few of the schemes had passed through the ORR’s regulatory process to ascertain their efficient price by this point in time, so the forecasts remained indicative.

In light of this emerging picture, last summer Secretary of State asked Network Rail as a matter of urgency to provide an update on forecast costs across the whole programme, working with the ORR and DfT officials.