Broadband: Social Tariffs

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

By its nature, this, of course, touches on the work of any government department. The Department for Education, through its digital entitlement programme, is equipping people with digital skills. DCMS encourages departments to consider, when making policy, the needs of people who might be digitally excluded. It is supporting that through, for instance, its work with the approximately 2,900 libraries nationwide to make sure that people can get online there if they need to.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that BT has said that by 2025, it is going to disconnect all wi-fi copper connections, and that the average cost for all consumers will be about £100 a month? How is anybody going to afford this?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We are working with providers to make sure that faster broadband connection can be rolled out to people across the country and that those costs are not passed on to consumers. It is of course in providers’ interests to provide fast connections and products that people want to use.

Heritage Rail: Young People

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on securing this debate and on the work he has done with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail. It is vital to keep interest going in this area, and tonight many of us will concentrate on the problems related to volunteering.

Years ago when I worked on the Channel Tunnel, we tried to get volunteers in France and the UK to help to make life better for everybody, and I was very struck by the difference in attitude towards volunteering between the British and French people. Here, I think we do very well. We could do better but we have a long tradition of volunteering in many businesses and sectors and occasionally in industries. In France, there was nothing. They said, “We’re not going to volunteer because, if it’s worth doing, the state will provide”. We can comment on that but that is the way it is, and we should be very grateful for what we are able to do in this country.

I was also struck by the summing up of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, at the end of the previous debate on energy. He said that very soon we will not be burning any more coal. I nearly stood up and said, “Except on the heritage railways if you know what’s good for you”. It is really important that we have a continuous supply of coal, as the noble Lord, Lord Jones, has just said. However, I will not talk about that tonight.

I declare an interest as the patron of the Helston Railway in Cornwall, which claims to be the southernmost railway in this country—a claim that I do not think anyone is competing with. When it comes to volunteering and business, this is probably one of the few sectors where this combination is to be found. Each heritage railway is a charity and a business, and it has lots of volunteers—not all its workers are volunteers but a large proportion of them are—and it is a very safety-conscious sector, as it has to be. It is probably unique in that. We know that if the volunteers have to be paid, most railways will close, but how will we keep them coming? If we do not, we will not have many heritage railways.

My noble friend mentioned that getting people to volunteer in their formative years and giving them practical experience is very important in this day and age. It is also very important that people study science, technology, engineering and mathematics rather than going off to do media studies, which an awful lot of them seem to want to do these days. It is a great start to a career in many fields, including the mainline railway, and it needs to be done during school age because that is when children’s friends do it and talk about it. Working on the railways provides a kind of pipeline of skills and I am sure that it leads to a sustainable future. As I said, lots of volunteers go on to work on the national railway system.

Looking at the age profile of many people in the transport sector, the situation with the mainline railways is getting better. They have even discovered the need to have women, which is a great step forward. There need to be many more but at least a start has been made. In the trucking industry, people tend to be older and that industry will have problems. Whether people who have worked on heritage railways as trainees or volunteers would move on to drive trucks is a debate that we can have, but we are lucky in the railway sector because, once people have learned the joys of working on trains, it is more likely that they will go on to work for the national railways.

Therefore, I am really pleased that the HRA is pushing the question of volunteers—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Faulkner. My understanding is much the same as his—that the HRA has been informed by counsel that the engagement of children as volunteers on the heritage railways is contrary to the provisions of Section 1 of the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920. It is appropriate to ask, “What about the men?”, although I suppose they are covered by “Young Persons”, but I find it interesting that women were singled out in 1920. The Act states:

“No child shall be employed in any industrial undertaking”.


The definition of an industrial undertaking includes railways. Whatever we think, that is what it says. As my noble friend said, the 1920 Act was amended by Parliament to make provision for formal work experience through the Education (Work Experience) Act 1973. Formal work experience is therefore allowed for those under school leaving age, while simply volunteering is not. Many people would prefer, for various reasons, just to volunteer. Section 558 of the Education Act 1996 states that,

“any person who is not over compulsory school age shall be deemed to be a child”.

I do not know whether that is stating the obvious but it is not very helpful.

I have been advised that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions should be able simply by statutory instrument, as my noble friend said, and without resort to primary legislation, to exclude heritage railways and tramways from the requirements of the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920. Again, it is believed that this can be done through powers vested in the Secretary of State by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. I would be very grateful if the Minister could confirm that. If he says that that is not true, then, as my noble friend has already asked, what other solutions does he have?

In conclusion, it is good to recall that when the right honourable Margaret Thatcher was Secretary of State for Education, she responded to demands for practical work experience within the school curriculum by introducing legislation to amend the application of the 1920 law to permit work experience in industry—I repeat, in industry—as part of the curriculum for students in the last two years of compulsory education. I am sure all noble Lords will agree that that is an important need: to give students, or young people, some practical experience of what life is like in industry. There seems to be some support for a change in the law. The Department for Education has not found a legislative route to allow such a change; maybe we should try a different route and a different department. Perhaps the Minister could advise us. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on the number of attempts he has made in this place and many others, including through the National Citizen Service Bill, but his amendments have not been accepted.

The Office of Rail and Road is the safety authority for all railways; I think we can all agree that it does a very good job in making sure this industry is safe. It supports the change of law, and assured us in 2016 that enforcement action under this 96 year-old legislation would not be in the public interest; that is some comfort, but we need more. I hope that when the Minister responds he will be able to give us lots of comfort.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Grocott. Like him, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on securing this debate and on the work he has done in this field over the years. I also take this opportunity to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. All too often, these debates are fairly exclusive; I find we are apt to be known as the verbal gricers of the railway industry. Bishops and railways go together quite well, of course. Bishop Eric Treacy was a well-known figure during my time in the railway industry. There was only one line of the right reverend Prelate’s speech with which I might disagree at some future stage. He said that young people do not need protection under the 1920 Act. Of course, he is right as far as the railway industry is concerned, but if this House ever gets around to debating the fast-food industry, I might take issue with him on that point. However, I commend his speech and his contribution today.

Looking back at the history of the railways, particularly in the context of this debate, it is a sobering thought that the youngest former cleaner who embarked on his first shift on a locomotive and left the depot on the British Rail standard gauge would now be approaching 70 years of age—an ominous warning to all of us of the passage of time. However, the attraction of the railway industry, particularly the heritage railways and steam locomotives, is one that includes all generations.

The “Flying Scotsman” locomotive is currently on tour. There has been some adverse publicity about the thousands of people who have gone to see it, some of whom got a bit closer to the lineside than they should have done because of the attraction of this particular locomotive. I visited the East Lancashire Railway with my grandson towards the end of last year, when the “Flying Scotsman” was there. My grandson is now 15 and if he remembers his grandfather for anything, I hope it is for getting him on the footplate of the “Flying Scotsman” on the East Lancashire Railway.

As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, people do not volunteer for just the locomotive department. There are various other jobs in the railway industry and he reminded us of some of them. On the mainline railway, there are still many hundreds of signal boxes. Of course, the intention is to concentrate mainline signalling on 10 or 12 regional operating centres in the years to come, but there are still lots of manual signal boxes on the mainline railway. Certainly as far as the heritage railways are concerned, operating those signal boxes will continue for many years to come.

The debate is first and foremost about attracting young people to the railway industry, and not just because of steam locomotives, as I have indicated; there are lots of other valuable jobs that they can do and to which they can contribute. Like previous speakers, I will for a moment be somewhat parochial. Towards the end of last year, I visited the Tyseley Locomotive Works just outside Birmingham. I talked there to some of the people who operate the works and the locomotive department. Subsequently its chairman, Mr Michael Whitehouse, contacted me about attracting young people to what is a working locomotive maintenance and operational depot—possibly one of the few left, certainly alongside British Rail. I quote from his letter:

“We already run an apprentice scheme for three students in conjunction with Bournville and South Birmingham colleges. We intend to introduce further training schemes and are already in dialogue with the Office of Rail and Road to establish a training scheme for railway operational staff”.


He says that they are anxious,

“to expand and upgrade our facilities to meet the significantly increasing demand for repairing heritage steam locomotives”.

I hope the Minister will be able to convince his colleagues in the Department for Transport of the need for a ministerial visit to the Tyseley works so that they can see their operational nature, and that any application made to the ERDF, for example, is sympathetically supported by the Minister’s department as well as the DfT.

I would like to draw your Lordships’ attention to another aspect of heritage railways—the need for connectivity between the heritage railway and the main line. If we are to attract young people and to train perhaps young would-be managers in the mainline system, they would certainly find that connectivity between the heritage railway and the main line attractive. It would be enormously useful.

Network Rail has lots of problems, some of which come in for considerable criticism in your Lordships’ House, as well as in the other place. Without adding to its burden, we should point out that occasionally Network Rail shows itself to be both expensive and uninterested in its connection with the heritage railway system. I will give your Lordships an example. Recently, the Swanage Railway was not a consultee on proposed changes involving its main line connection near Wareham, even though this was re-signalled to rejoin the railway with a grant from Dorset County Council. Network Rail is something of a Goliath as far as the heritage railway sector is concerned, but the voluntary sector faces heavy expenditure for track and signalling alterations. I wonder whether the Minister could take back the message that it would certainly be extremely helpful if heritage railways were made a statutory consultee where this sort of work, which might well affect their own operations, is concerned. At the moment, it is very much a matter of whether Network Rail consults them. In the case of Swanage Railway, it did not.

I referred to the fact that there are many jobs that young people could do in the sector, as did my noble friend Lord Grocott. We have heard about the plea and desire to look again at the regulations and the 1920 Act. Of course, it is all very well for the Office of Rail and Road to say that it does not anticipate taking any action under this statute—I welcome that news—but if a young person is injured I am not sure whether the legal profession would take the same laid-back view of its responsibilities. It would be useful if the legislation was withdrawn.

Referring to some of the other work that takes place in the railway industry, I have mentioned signal boxes previously and bored your Lordships with stories of my own involvement. I will try not to do so again on this occasion.

[Lord Berkeley]

Oh, go on!

[Lord Snape]

Well, all right, just this once I will be led astray.

One of the signal boxes in which I used to work, just outside Stockport, is still there—I will not go into the details of why, but it still operates as a mainline signal box. When it was necessary to modernise it, yet still retain the lever frame installed by the London and North Western Railway in 1888, locking fitters had to be brought in from India to do the work because we have largely lost these skills. If we could retain those skills through the heritage railway sector, that would be invaluable. This is probably an apocryphal story—fake news, as a distinguished visitor to our country might say—but I am told that after six months of modernising the signal boxes in my home town of Stockport, they were delighted to get back to India.

Undersea Cables

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the security of undersea cables linking the United Kingdom with the United States and other countries.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, submarine fibre optic cables play an essential role in the ecosystem of a successful internet-based economy. That is why, as part of our programme to protect the UK’s communication infrastructure, the DCMS is working closely with industry to improve the security and resilience of the UK’s submarine cable network. This includes assessing the physical, personnel, and cyber risk to subsea cables, and offering recommendations to cable operators to mitigate them.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for that Answer. I think his department has got some way to go, though. He may recall that, about a month ago, a journalist from the Sunday Times walked into a farmhouse in Cornwall through an open door and photographed all the connections to one of the main submarine cables. Last summer, a ship dropped its anchor on a cable between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland and cut the cable, and nobody has bothered to prosecute it. Will he explain whether the Government really are taking seriously the issue of security on these cables, and what will they do ensure that the two instances I have just exemplified will not happen again?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord raises an important point. As far at the Sunday Times report is concerned, I can say that the reporter was unable to access any secure section of the facility. The essential point about this is that there is resilience in the system. There are 11 landing sites, for example, for transatlantic cables, in different places. Because of the resilience of the system, when one particular cable is broken the system continues. As far as prosecution is concerned, most of the breaks in the cables—and there are a considerable number each year; about 30 to 40 each year—are as the result of accidents. That is why it is not normally necessary to prosecute. However, these are civil actions because the cables belong to individual companies. It is up to them to seek damages.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 17th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to acquaint the House that they, having been informed of the purport of the Data Protection Bill, have consented to place their prerogatives and interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

Can the Minister explain what interests the Prince of Wales has in this Bill?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I will write to the noble Lord.

Clause 2: Protection of personal data

Amendment 1