Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their Great British Railway white paper (CP423), published on 20 May, how will their plan incentivise train operators to improve their services; and what is their estimate of the costs of (1) preparing, and (2) managing, agreements with train operators.

New Passenger Service Contracts will be designed to cut through the complexity and cost of procuring passenger services, open up more effective competition and attract new bidders.

They will be a mix of both commuter and long-distance services with mixed incentives to reflect the different risks and commercial opportunities to reflect the regional divisions in Great British Railways.

All Passenger Service Contracts will incentivise operators to run reliable, competitive, high-quality services and grow passenger numbers.

We expect to launch initial competitions for Passenger Service Contracts by the time the emergency recovery agreements end in 2022. Further detail on how the new contracts will be managed will be announced in due course.