Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions he has held with (a) industry and (b) other stakeholders on the potential merits of increasing the amount of freight transported around the UK on the rail network.

The Government is committed to growing rail freight and I meet regularly with industry to discuss the work we are doing to achieve this. I host bi-monthly roundtable meetings with the rail freight sector and Network Rail, I have visited freight operators on site and attended numerous industry events. I have also met with representative bodies of rail freight customers and also of Ports with key interests in rail freight.