Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department has made an assessment of whether the cracking issue identified in the Hitachi Intercity Class 800 will potentially worsen over time.

Hitachi are investigating the cause of these cracks. It is therefore too early to say if this will worsen over time until the trains are modified to prevent this issue reoccurring, that is why there is a detailed inspection regime of each train, and if there is any evidence of any cracking that could impact of the safe operation of the train it will not be used for passenger service.

My expectation of Hitachi is that they will identify the cause and rectify to prevent reocurrance.