Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the causes of signal and power failures on the South West main line between Woking and Eastleigh on 6 December 2016.

The Department does not generally make an assessment of the causes of individual operational incidents. Network Rail, as the infrastructure provider, is best placed to do this. I am aware, however, that on this occasion the problems were caused by a failure of the power supply to the signalling centre in Basingstoke that damaged the signalling equipment which had to be repaired and reset.