Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has had discussions with South Western Railway on increasing the number of carriages on their suburban routes to enable social distancing.

The Department continues to work closely with all operators and Network Rail to ensure that services are appropriate to passenger demand whilst responding to the challenges of COVID-19 and delivering value for the taxpayer. From 12 April, operators have increased provision to around 75 per cent of pre-pandemic service levels and targeted areas of potentially high demand. South Western Railway will increase its peak capacity to approximately 85 per cent of pre-pandemic service levels at the next timetable change on 16 May.

The Department believes that operators know their routes and passengers best. South Western Railway is therefore best placed to deploy its available train fleet to provide sufficient socially distanced capacity on each individual service and to make adjustments in response to any observed increase to passenger numbers using its services.