Hammond Eggs - On opacity

Another gem from the new railway minister...

Mrs Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what recent estimate he has made of the total number of passengers travelling between Birmingham and (a) Manchester, (b) Leeds and (c) Wigan by rail during an average week day.

Stephen Hammond: Though some estimates for journeys such as these have been produced for departmental purposes, these estimates are not available for publication as the underlying data belong to the train operators and are considered commercially confidential.

Presumably this is civil service speak for can't be @rsed.

UPDATE: This from JH...

Presumably this applies to all TOC's on all lines. 

If so, where does HS2 Ltd get the "current" data to use as a base?