Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the aims of the 30-year strategy for the railways, chaired by Keith Williams, are in comparison to The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail report and the Integrated Rail Plan.

The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail (WSPR), published May 2021, set out a wide-ranging package of commitments and reforms that represent the biggest change to the railway in three decades. One commitment is the development of a 30-year strategy for the whole rail sector, which will be produced for Ministers by the Great British Railways Transition Team, and is currently known as the ‘Whole Industry Strategic Plan’ (WISP). It is designed to provide a strategic framework, framed around five strategic objectives for rail, for decision-making over a 30-year horizon, but is not a specific package of investments. The Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands gives effect to another key plank of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail that we want to grow, not shrink, the network. Published in November 2021, it sets out government’s plan for delivering and sequencing major investment in rail network of the North and Midlands, the biggest ever Government investment in rail.