Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Baroness Blake of Leeds on 7 October that savings of between £110 million and £150 million would accrue from the public ownership of the railway (HL Deb col 1833), how this figure was calculated.

The figures represent the expected savings in fees which will no longer be payable to private-sector operators, each year, once all currently franchised services have transferred to public ownership. A range is presented because these fees include both fixed and performance-based elements, so future years’ values are subject to some uncertainty.