National Railway Museum and Ownership of National Assets

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

This has been a very interesting debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing it and will go on to talk about the issues he raised.

There were interesting contributions from other Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), who is not in his place, rightly called on the Minister to emphasise the importance of—and ensure there is a Government strategy for—developing policies around our industrial heritage. That did not surprise me, as he and I attended the same school, St Alban’s RC comprehensive in Pontypool, which was located around the house of the Hanbury-Tenison family, who were the ironmasters in Pontypool. It is a constituency with a great industrial heritage.

We also had interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who managed to get into quite a nasty spat with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman). No doubt the rivalry between the two will be played out in the pages of their local newspapers, probably to the benefit of the popularity of both with their constituents.

There was also a very knowledgeable contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who told us about the wonderful National Railway Museum in her constituency. I confess that I have not visited it, but I will put that right as soon as I can. She tried to assuage the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North.

Sadly, I have to correct my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington, who is a good friend. The first steam-powered rail journey took place on 21 February 1804, when Trevithick’s locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that there were actually no passengers on board that train?

[Kevin Brennan]

Well, it was hauling coal at the time; I do not think it would have been a very pleasant journey among the high-quality south Wales anthracite coal. It was the first steam-powered rail journey in the world, and it took place in south Wales, not Darlington, but I will not labour the point. My hon. Friend made a good point about the lack of parity of “esteam”—excuse the pun—between fine art and our industrial heritage sometimes. The Minister should bear that in mind in his response.

I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North for securing the debate, not least because it gives us the opportunity to talk about steam trains. Who would not want to do that? It has been a really interesting debate. I well remember as a young boy growing up in south Wales often visiting Barry Island on a day trip. Hon. Members may be aware that at the time Barry Island was known not for the television programme “Gavin & Stacey”, as it is now, but because it had a great elephants’ graveyard of locomotives.

In the late 1950s, a scrap merchant from Barry Island called Dai Woodham began procuring steam locomotives that were being taken out of service as part of the 1955 railway modernisation plan. In 1959, he visited the Swindon works, where he was shown how to scrap a steam engine—a completely new process for the family’s scrap business. Fortunately, it was a difficult process; it was much easier to scrap the carriages, so that is what they did for the first few years. By the late 1960s, when the great revival of interest in steam engines and heritage railways really took off, hundreds of steam engines—I think there were 217—were left in Barry Island in Dai Woodham’s scrap yard. They had not been scrapped because it was easier to cut up the carriages than the steam locomotives. Barry became a great source for steam engine preservation when the heritage railway movement gathered pace in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I have visited Barry Island, which is also a seaside resort. My late mother-in-law came from Penrhiwceiber in south Wales; we went to stay with her relatives, naturally. The Barry railway preservation graveyard has saved hundreds of superb engines for the future. We must be grateful for that, even though it was a matter of accident. Many of the artefacts at heritage railways and the NRM originally came from Barry, and we must also be grateful for that. What would have happened had we not had railways to transport coal, which was the major industry of south Wales?

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed. My mother’s brothers and my grandfather were coalminers who were part of that whole process. Further, one of the first jobs I had as a young man was working over the summer as a platelayer in the British steelworks at Llanwern. I had some real hands-on experience of working on the railway, and can tell the House that lifting lines and packing ballast under the tracks and sleepers quickly convinced me that politics was a much better profession to go into. It is an easier occupation than working on the railways, which is a tremendously skilled but very labour-intensive job.

Later, as a skills Minister, I had the great opportunity to visit Pete Waterman’s site at Crewe—he of “The X Factor” fame—where lots of young people are trained as apprentices to work on the wonderful heritage railway lines and schemes we have around the country. As the older engineers were all dying off, that skill and knowledge had to be passed on to the next generation. I commend the work that Pete Waterman, as a railway enthusiast, has done over many years to ensure that those skills are indeed passed on.

This country’s heritage railway industry is extraordinary. I looked earlier at the list and thought I might read out a few, but I am not going to because there are countless wonderful heritage railway lines around the country. It is appropriate that we are debating that today. This debate is very important. We have heard about the National Railway Museum in York, where visitors can enjoy two centuries of railway history. As we heard, it was opened in 1975; it nearly doubled in size during its expansion in 1990, and in 2004, along with the local authority, it opened the museum in Shildon, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned earlier—the first national museum in the north-east.

It would be helpful if, when the Minister replies, he answers the questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North and some questions that I would like to add. We have rightly focused on the National Railway Museum today but, as hon. Members may know, the Government are currently carrying out a museums review. Will the Minister give us a steer as to when he expects the review to surface? I understand it is very close to completion—perhaps the write-around is going on among Ministers at the moment—but it would be helpful to the House to know. That is reasonable; this should not be a state secret.

Will the Minister also tell us what impact cuts to local authority budgets are having on local museums—in particular, on opening hours? Has he undertaken any kind of survey of local museums to try to estimate that? My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington mentioned the fact that her local railway museum is generally closed on Mondays and sometimes, at this time of year, on Tuesdays as well. Is that something that the Minister is worried about and is it getting worse?

We also heard the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North about how museums manage their collections. Will the museum review deal with questions regarding ethical disposal and collection management? Is that going to be part of the review? Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to keep Labour’s policy of free admission to our national museums, which the previous Labour Government introduced, including the National Railway Museum at York? My hon. Friend also raised specific concerns about the disposal of three locomotives. He did not quite accuse the Minister or the National Railway Museum of the great train robbery, but he did raise questions that the Minister needs to answer about consultation, transparency, tendering and fairness, as well as compliance with the National Heritage Act 1983.

In conclusion, Britain has a remarkable museums sector. We welcome the museums review that the Government are undertaking and that Neil Mendoza is doing for them. We are concerned that, unlike with previous reviews under Labour, no new resources will be made available to support museums, which are under severe financial pressure as a result of those cuts at the local level. That will inevitably lead to further issues around the disposal of museum collections. I hope the Minister will give the House reassurances on those issues.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (John Glen)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I thank the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) for proposing this debate about the National Railway Museum and the ownership of national assets. I am grateful to the large number of hon. Members who have contributed. In my response I will seek to address the specific points made.

As we have heard, the collections of our national and regional museums are of profound importance. We can be extremely proud of the local, regional and global significance and diversity of many of those items. It is right to ensure that the collections are managed well.

The hon. Gentleman is concerned that the National Railway Museum has disposed of assets that should be retained within the national collection. However, I do not agree with his proposal that the National Railway Museum reopens this question. The museum is bound by the National Heritage Act 1983, but is not required by that to consult the public before disposing of items. Those are curatorial decisions and are therefore independent from Government—and I believe rightly so. I will go into some detail on how the process works.

While the 1983 Act sets out some restrictions on the museum’s disposal powers, the Science Museum Group, of which the National Railway Museum is a part, has a rigorous process in place to ensure that disposals are consistent with those restrictions. Having spoken to Andrew McLean, the assistant director and head curator at the museum, yesterday afternoon, I am confident that the decision to transfer the engines, particularly the engine to Swanage railway, was the right decision in this circumstance. It does not set any precedents, as I think the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) suggested, but follows accepted museum practice. It has been undertaken in this way in other situations for many years. It would not be appropriate for me to intervene, even if I desired to do so.

Since I took on this ministerial role, I have had the opportunity to visit many museums and heritage sites all over the country. I have not been to York or Darlington yet, but there is always a new opportunity.

[Kevin Brennan]

We could go together.

[John Glen]

Perhaps we could—I welcome that.

I have been deeply impressed by the passion that staff and visitors have for their museums and how seriously museums take their duty to preserve and care for their collections, which in many cases, including the national collection, are specifically held in trust for the public now and for the future.

The hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) gave a passionate defence of and was an advocate for her museum. I point out to her that Arts Council England is investing £118 million in museums in the current period, up to next year, and from 2018 many more museums will be part of the national portfolio. Museums will be able to apply for grants from the Arts Council, so there are more opportunities. I recognise the funding constraints and urge her to liaise with her local museum on how that could happen.

The National Railway Museum sites at York and Shildon are among the most popular museums in the UK. Visitor numbers are around 750,000 a year and were boosted in 2015-16 by the exciting arrival of the Flying Scotsman. The collection there includes more than 250 locomotives and rolling stock, 628 coins and medals, and nearly 5,000 pieces of railway uniform, equipment, documents, records, artwork and photographs. Such a fantastic and popular array of objects—especially including large locomotives—naturally requires a lot of management. The curators and museum in York need to be given full credit for the role they have played, not only within their own precincts but in the regeneration of York. They must decide what to display to the public, and how best to construct an interesting and informative narrative around the collection, and take into account the historical and physical quality of the objects. With locomotives, a large amount of storage space is also required.

It is clear from what we have heard that the hon. Member for Luton North holds the National Railway Museum collections in great esteem, as we all do, and naturally is concerned to ensure that they are being well managed. That is of great importance to me too, particularly as the assets of our national museums are, in essence, owned by the public and their upkeep and display contributed to by taxpayers. It is only right and proper that national museums are run at arm’s length from Government. We expect, however, that collections are reviewed regularly to ensure that they remain relevant, appropriate and accessible to the widest possible audiences. The collections management policy of the Science Museum Group, including its disposal guidelines, is publicly available. For clarity, I will set out how such decisions are made.

Recommendations for disposal must be approved by a board of survey—as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned—held at the individual museum site, where they are peer-reviewed by colleagues. Recommendations then go to the collections and research trustee sub-committee, followed by the Science Museum board of trustees. It is in the nature of the heritage transport sector that some charitable institutions with heritage rail collections do not necessarily operate as accredited museums. As such, when disposal to a national or accredited museum is not possible, the aim is to keep objects in the public domain. The Science Museum Group also gives priority to transferring items to museums or heritage organisations with a local or regional connection. That decision-making process is not random, but clear and well considered, with a number of checks.

The National Railway Museum’s decision to deaccession this particular locomotive was based on three factors: first, duplication of this type of locomotive within its collection; secondly, the vehicle being in particularly poor condition; and finally, the vehicle being more suited to a museum telling local and regional stories. I am confident that due processes were followed and that the museum made the right decision for the object.

Swanage Railway Trust is a well respected heritage railway organisation, which has the knowledge, skills and storage facilities to care for the engine in a way that will let future generations enjoy it. Indeed, only yesterday we found out that it had received a generous private donation that will allow it to strip down and examine the T3 to establish whether it can be restored to full working order. Swanage Railway believes that the engine can tell its story most effectively by hauling trains on a branch line railway that it was built to run on more than 120 years ago, and I am inclined to agree.