Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether the planned improvements by Network Rail over the Christmas period will still take place given the industrial action at that time.

Network Rail has confirmed only eight of seventy planned work packages will be cancelled as a result of strike action but the majority of its £120 million programme of improvement works will go ahead over the Christmas period. The industrial action means that at the most important work sites, Network Rail will need to take possession of the railway earlier on Christmas Eve and hand it back at the end of the works later on 27 December than originally planned.