Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how competition regulations on state aid are applied by the Office of Rail and Road when assessing applications for Open Access rail services; and what changes are expected following the ORR's move into her Department.

Under the current framework, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is responsible for making access decisions in line with its statutory duties. Moving forward, this will change as Great British Railways takes over responsibility for managing access to the network and ORR takes on a new role to hold GBR to account and ensure fairness and transparency for all operators. ORR will not, however, become part of the Department for Transport – it will remain independent.

All public bodies, including ORR and the future GBR, are obliged to comply with subsidy control and competition legislation across all of their activities, and this will remain the case.