Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the effect on rail users of scheduled Manchester rail timetable changes due to take effect in December 2022.

The Government set up the Manchester Recovery Task Force in January 2020 to address the unacceptable levels of train performance in the north west of England following the late change to the May 2018 timetable.

The task force, which includes Transport for the North and Transport for Greater Manchester, consulted on a number of options and took account of the more than 800 responses to identify the optimal service for users and the Northern economy.

Northern Trains and TransPennine Express, working with Network Rail and other train operators, used this assessment to develop the timetable which will come into force in December 2022 and which will improve performance significantly while still meeting the journey needs of the vast majority of regular travellers on lines into Manchester.