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2.10 pm
Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North): I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome(Mr. Robinson) on choosing the subject of the Bill, and I am grateful to him for his generous reference to my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Bayley), who has put much effort into achieving the ends that the Bill embraces.
My only possible disagreement with the Bill is over what the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said about there not being any need for criminal sanctions. Given some of the people to whom the Government appear willing to sell our railways, criminal sanctions might not be a bad idea. Compared with systematic ticket fraud or stashing away a few million pounds for after the success of a management buy-out, flogging a few artefacts on the side might seem a relatively minor offence.
Mr. Mark Robinson:
I deliberately tried to keep the politics of change in the railways out of my speech. When I visited Cranmore station, it was mentioned to me that one of the advantages of privatisation, which is already apparent, is that people are thinking up new ideas and new ways in which to improve our railways, which I am sure is for the good.
Mr. Wilson:
Let us leave it at that. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that sounds like a pious hope rather than a firm commitment.
One cannot entirely leave politics out of the debate, because the Bill is a necessary tidying-up measure as a consequence of rail fragmentation for privatisation. If the railways were not being fragmented for privatisation, there would be no need for the Bill.
The alternative to the Bill, however, as I am sure the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome would agree, is unthinkable. If no safeguard were built into rail privatisation legislation, the history of our railways would be scattered to the four winds, which is certainly not acceptable. Indeed, it would be a tragedy to compound the other tragedies unfolding in our railway network. There must be measures to stop people who,if uncontrolled, might be prepared to sell the railway family silver and other valuables.
We are not only dealing with knick-knacks. For instance, Railtrack owns many historic documents such as the Brunel drawings--the original working plans for the Great Western railway, signed by Brunel and still kept at Swindon--as well as artefacts such as signal boxes and items of signalling equipment. There is much valuable material, and not only in the monetary sense. Much of it is recognised as of intrinsic value by everybody who is interested in this country's extraordinary railway history. We do not want Railtrack to be privatised, and I do not expect it to be, but if it were, it would be an additional public scandal if it gained untrammelled possession of those artefacts.
It is as well to keep some control of the more ancient parts of our railway network, and not only for historic reasons. I was interested in a story in last Sunday's Wales on Sunday that described the return of "ancient trains" to the rails. It said:
So, in our wonderful new railway system, the engine has been brought back into service for regular passenger use.
On the south Wales to Birmingham route, passengers
A spokesman for the train leasing companies went as far as to say:
They may do if they choose to, but whether they want to turn up for their normal commuter train and find that it has been replaced by one that the bold, new, fragmented railway company has hired from a rail preservation company because there is no new rolling stock in the country is another matter. I repeat, the spokesman, effectively for the Government, said:
However, Cardiff resident Nick Lewis, who travelled between Cardiff and Newport on Sunday, said:
The Minister for Railways and Roads (Mr. John Watts):
No sense of history.
Mr. Wilson:
As the Minister says, that shows no sense of history. However, he would probably prefer to choose when he travels on 40-year-old trains hired from rail preservation societies and when he travels on rather more modern rolling stock. The point is that it is not just a matter of keeping old railway artefacts to put them into museums. There is the problem that, in the new set-up, the museums will be raided to keep the railways running at all.
As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said, the railway industry in this country has a long and honourable history, with its origins in the 18th-century coal mining industry. Earlier, hon. Members discussed which was the first locomotive. There are many contenders for the title of first railway in the United Kingdom. The first railway sanctioned by Parliament was the Surrey iron railway from Wandsworth to Croydon in 1801. The first Scottish line authorised by Act of Parliament was the Kilmarnock and Troon railway of 1808, which opened in 1812 and linked collieries at Kilmarnock to Troon harbour. There is no truth in the rumour that Jimmy Knapp was on board. The line operated with a steam locomotive and carried passengers as well, several years before the Stockton and Darlington railway in 1825, which is usually credited with being the first public steam railway in Britain.
The railways laid the foundations of much of the modern British economy and were one of the more important British developments. Railways were then adopted around the world. British and especially Scottish railway engineers took their expertise to the railways of south America, India and Australia, as well as Europe.
It is understandable that the passionate devotion of many in Britain to the railway should extend to an interest in preserving its past. There are 35 preserved steam railways listed in the British Rail timetable and dozens of museums dedicated to the history of the railways. Many people devote weekends, holidays and retirement to restoring railway equipment and sharing it with the public, who have a huge interest in our railway heritage.
Regardless of questions of ownership--I do not think that my views on that can be mistaken--it is right to have in place a properly ordered procedure for the identification and protection of historic railways. The Bill is therefore welcome. The real tragedy in our railway system is that we are now approaching 1,000 days since an order was placed in this country for new railway rolling stock. Let us therefore treasure what was given to us in the past, while bitterly regetting what is being done to our railway network and our railway rolling stock in the present.
The operations of the proposed committee must be rigid. I can see the point in a six-month time bar after which the owners can do what they like. However, that suggests potential loopholes, and it must be absolutely clear that the availability of the artefacts is notified, publicly known and considered at an early stage by the committee, and the committee's conclusions should be well known, certainly within the railway world. We do not want to find that, somehow or other, certain disposals have slipped through before anyone noticed. In Committee, we should consider ways in which to tighten up the procedures so that they guard against that eventuality.
The Minister for Railways and Roads (Mr. John Watts):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Robinson) on having introduced this important Bill. I also welcome thesupport of the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North(Mr. Wilson). We do not often agree on railway matters, but I am glad that we can at least agree on this one. However, I shall not let the hon. Gentleman tempt me towards some of the more controversial aspects of the railways. Perhaps the Hansard record of some of our rather more spirited exchanges on privatisation should form part of the record of the history of privatisation--but I shall say no more about that today.
As the Minister responsible for railways, I am well aware of the importance of and fascination for railway heritage. My hon. Friend has already touched on its value to future generations and to historians. On a more practical note, it is vital for the railway that artefacts and records of historical significance are preserved, so that the industry can benefit from the lessons of the past.
Historic railway records can be surprisingly relevant to the running of the railways today. Indeed, Railtrack still has about 7,000 engineering drawings from the Brunel era. They have not been placed in a museum, because, as my hon. Friend has explained, they are still in use as working records.
The need to ensure the preservation of Britain's railway heritage was taken into account during the passage of the Railways Act 1993, by the creation of the Railway
Heritage Committee, an independent committee of experts from railway heritage interests and from the railways industry, to ensure that historically significant railway artefacts and records went to the appropriate collecting institution at the end of their useful lives and became available to a wider public. I must take this opportunity to join my hon. Friend in applauding the work done by that committee.
The committee's powers under the Railways Act extended to the British Railways Board, and to the new public sector bodies due to come into being as part of the restructuring process. Now many of BR's successors are entering the private sector, and thus leaving the scope of the existing heritage provisions, which means that new arrangements have to be made.
Ministers recognised while the Railways Bill was in another place that it would in time be necessary to extend the heritage provisions to the private sector. As my hon. Friend said, there was then a proposal to introduce a voluntary scheme, but on closer examination that proposal proved inappropriate, and we decided that legislation for a statutory scheme was necessary.
"On the Rhymney Valley line, a 35-year-old train from . . . Watermans Railways company travels the route from Mondays to Fridays. The Class 47 diesel engine, normally used on special trips, is known as Davies the Ocean."
"found themselves on a train leased back from a railway preservation company in Lancashire."
"A lot of people actually like travelling on the old rolling stock."
"A lot of people actually like travelling on the old rolling stock."
"I couldn't believe it when this ancient train trundled into the station. It was an absolute disgrace to go back 40 years in time to travel in this dilapidated and decrepit train."
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