Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many seats on direct train services there were per day between (a) Edinburgh, (b) Glasgow, (c) Newcastle, (d) Birmingham, (e) Nottingham, (f) Derby, (g) Peterborough, (h) Norwich, (i) Portsmouth, (j) Southampton, (k) Preston, (l) Stoke-on-Trent, (m) Leeds, (n) Sheffield, (o) Liverpool and London in (A) the year before privatisation of the railways and (B) the last financial year.

The Department does not hold the specific information requested. However, industry figures from the Rail Delivery Group suggest that the number of planned train services per year has increased from 5.69 million in 1997-98 to 7.30 million in 2016/17. The industry also cites some specific examples of increased services on routes to London, such as Manchester to London increasing from 17 trains per day in 1994 to 47 in 2016, and the number of trains from London to Sheffield increasing from 15 per day in 1994 to 31 in 2016.

In relation to the number of seats, According to the Rail Delivery Group, there were 10,400 vehicles in passenger use in 1996/97 compared to 14,025 as at March 2018, an increase of over 3,500 vehicles or nearly 35%. This additional fleet capacity is helping to lengthen trains and contribute towards the thousands of extra rail services each week.