Employment Rights Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, for making an excellent speech which I could very easily have made myself—there was nothing in it with which I disagreed. He rightly referred to the fact that he and I tabled an identical amendment in Committee. We have come back tonight because this issue really has to be settled one way or another. I have previously declared my interest as president of the Heritage Railway Association. I should also say that I am the sponsor each year of an HRA award for young volunteers, to encourage a continued influx of young people to learn the skills and enjoy the satisfaction that working on a steam railway brings.

Last month, in my role as president of the HRA and co-chair of the All-Party Group on Heritage Rail, I was fortunate enough to take part in the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Ffestiniog Railway in north Wales, which was brilliantly organised and fitted in admirably with National Rail’s Railway 200 programme. It involved a cavalcade of every steam locomotive that the railway possesses, in procession on the Cob in Porthmadog, and it was a very fine tribute to the railway’s history and its contribution to the economy of north Wales. I met many young people who are keen to join the railway but are prevented from doing so because of their age, and I took the opportunity also to talk to older volunteers who are now part of the very successful team on the Ffestiniog. Almost without exception, those older volunteers started at ages as young as 13, back in the 1970s, in blissful ignorance of the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920—an Act which, frankly, had disappeared from public consciousness. Indeed, many were involved in the hard physical labour of building the deviation that some of your Lordships may know, which allowed the railway to be carried above the waterline of a new reservoir to reach the northern terminus of Blaenau Ffestiniog.

As the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said, once the HRA received the wholly unwelcome advice that the 1920 Act had been interpreted to extend to under-16s and included volunteering as well as paid work, things changed. The safety regulators have made it clear that they would not prosecute under the 1920 Act and would maintain safety and safeguarding under more recent and appropriate legislation; but if that is so, I have to ask why this anachronistic legislation is still on the statute book.

I am most grateful to the Minister, my noble friend Lord Katz, for the discussions he initiated with the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and me on this, and I know how sympathetic he is to the points we have been making. I understand that the possibility of further guidance from the safety regulators remains, but that guidance must be reinforced by statutory force, because while the 1920 Act is in force, responsible Heritage Railway managers will not wish to break it. Even if the ORR would not prosecute, what is to stop a local authority or a parent doing so? It is time to make things clear and simple by removing this outdated restriction that is holding heritage railways back from encouraging the next generation, preventing them enjoying the opportunities that so many leading figures in the railway heritage movement had as youngsters.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I will be exceedingly brief. I put my name to this amendment in the spirit of support for our heritage, of which our heritage railways are a significant part. We need to do everything we can to allow young people who wish to do so to work as volunteers in this area. I hope that the Government will look favourably on this amendment.