Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what discussions he has had with Network Rail on the electrification of the railway line between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury.

The Department is working with Network Rail and the rail industry to support Network Rail’s delivery of a Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy (TDNS). TDNS will inform decisions about the scale and pace of railway decarbonisation to 2050 in our Transport Decarbonisation Plan.

In July this year Network Rail published TDNS interim findings. The report identified electrification as the preferred option to decarbonise rail traffic between Birmingham and Shrewsbury via Wolverhampton. Once the final TDNS is published we will develop business cases for each electrification scheme to ensure they are deliverable and affordable.