Plans to reopen rail lines by reversing the Beeching cuts in the 1960s will help tackle the housing crisis, Chris Grayling has claimed.

The Transport secretary said new plans to put passenger routes on freight lines and open line axed in the 1960s will "unlock housing opportunities".

Mr Grayling was in Bletchley, Oxfordshire to unveil plans a cross country train route from Oxford to Cambridge.

Last month he unveiled plans to open rail routes shut in the notorious cuts of the 1960s which saw Richard Beeching preside of the axing of 4,000 route miles leaving Britain with 13,721 miles of railway lines in 1966.

Restoring lost capacity is one of a number of reforms featured in the Government's new rail strategy.

Mr Grayling told The Daily Telegraph: "There are places in the country where reopening an old rail route or bringing passenger trains back onto something that has just been a freight line can unlock housing opportunities.

"We have got this huge housing crisis - we are determined to deal with it, and better infrastructure is a really important part of that and some of those Beeching lines that disappeared can help us tackle that challenge."

Studies show that housing developments tend to cluster around transport infrastructure like train stations.