To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate he has made of the average level of peak hour overcrowding on trains into the cities of (a) London, (b) Manchester, (c) Leeds, (d) Sheffield, (e) Liverpool, (f) Birmingham, (g) Glasgow, (h) Bristol, (i) Cardiff and (j) Nottingham in each of the last five years. (248626)

Data are only collected and routinely provided to the Department for Transport by train operators serving the London and South East commuter market. Crowding data have not been consistently collected for the other cities mentioned for the period sought and are not available.

The information requested for train operators serving the London and South East commuter market is currently published annually in aggregated form by the Office for Rail Regulation within its “National Rail Trends Yearbook” and are available on the Office of Rail Regulation website at:

www.rail-reg.gov.uk.

The latest published data relate to passenger counts carried out by train operators in autumn 2007.