Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what lessons they have learned from the delay in opening the current phase of East West Rail passenger services, and what steps they are taking to ensure that future phases are delivered and opened on schedule.

While every phase of EWR presents different delivery challenges, lessons are already being incorporated into future planning, including strengthening programme governance, improving integration between infrastructure delivery and railway operations, and ensuring operational readiness is considered earlier during project development. The procurement of the operator should have taken place much earlier than it did, which is the fault of the previous government.