Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment his Department has made of the safety of train passengers when train guards are removed.

Whilst decisions on staffing are for individual operators, the Government has been clear that it wants to see more staff on our railway, not fewer, and it is not aware of any plans by franchised operators to remove guards from train services.

With respect to the mode of train operation and guards, the ORR, the independent rail regulator, and the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) have found that Driver Controlled Operation (DCO), where the train driver has responsibility for opening and closing the doors and dispatching the train from a station but a guard / second crew member continues to be rostered on the train, is safe.

An RSSB report also concluded that the introduction of DCO according to the standard safety management requirements that all rail companies routinely meet does not increase any other passenger safety risks and furthermore that cancelling a DCO train in the absence of its guard / second crew member is more risky than running it with only its driver.