To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many staff are employed by (a) Network Rail and (b) the Train Operating companies currently; and what estimate he has made of the number of staff that will be employed by those organisations in 2023.

According to Network Rail’s Annual Report and Accounts published in 2020, there were around 42,000 staff employed at the organisation in 2019/20. The Office of Rail and Road’s key statistics regarding Train Operating Companies, also published in 2020, indicates there were around 62,000 full-time equivalents across the operators in Great Britain over the same period. No estimates have been made as to the potential number of staff that will be directly employed by Network Rail or the individual Train Operating Companies by 2023.