Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 19 October (HL2257), how much has been spent by departments other than the Department for Transport.

There has been no further expenditure made by any other ministerial department into the Competition and Markets Authority inquiry regarding the overlap between Arriva buses and Arriva Trains.

As an independent non-ministerial department, the CMA is responsible for merger inquiries. In this role, it has spent approximately £480k (including staff time, legal fees and consulting fees) investigating the acquisition of the Northern rail franchise by Arriva Rail North Ltd. It is not possible to establish what proportion of this figure was spent on the assessment of the overlap between Arriva Buses and Arriva Trains.