Railways Bill

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege, though one tinged with sadness, to follow the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, who has just reminded us of the great, gentle wisdom and huge experience that he has brought to your Lordships’ House and which we are set to lose in September when he retires.

Our association, our friendship, goes back not just over the seven years that we have overlapped in your Lordships’ House but nearly a quarter of a century, for it was in 2002 that he came to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I was an undergraduate, as our 27th master, and a hugely popular one at that. Emma prides itself on being the friendliest college in Cambridge; it became friendlier still when the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, was our master. Within weeks of arriving, he seemed to know everybody by first name, a feat that he repeated over the 10 years of his stewardship of the college. He did that at the same time as we managed to top the Tompkins Table, the league table for the best degree results, in five of the 10 years that he was master—not, I should say, helped by my own meagre 2:1.

Behind his genuine, friendly exterior is, as we have just heard again, a forensic mind and a wealth of experience. My noble friends Lady Berridge and Lady Blackwood of North Oxford are among those in this House who know what it is like to stand at the Dispatch Box and worry about a probing question coming from their former master. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne is among those who look at a man who was Permanent Secretary in not one but two departments when he was in the Cabinet. Noble Lords from across the House, I am sure, feel the same about the man that they sat around the Cabinet table with during his time as Cabinet Secretary.

The noble Lord’s advice, as today, is always offered with great kindness, great tact and in a constructive spirit. If we fail to heed it, then the fault is ours. One particularly precocious undergraduate seeking a career in politics was sternly advised not to do it straight after graduation—noble Lords may think perhaps I should have listened a bit more carefully.

But even after that advice was disregarded, the noble Lord was very generous and has always been very supportive. He was master in the time when noble Lords could choose to receive Hansard in hard copy. I do not know if he remembers, but he very kindly offered a few volumes of it to go on the bookshelves in my rooms that probably should have been full of history books and lecture notes. I took him up on the offer. I turned up at the Master’s Lodge to find some 60 or 70 volumes, each the size of a telephone directory, waiting for me. I had to borrow a shopping trolley to bring them back to my room. My advice to any noble Lords who are helping him move out of his office here is to be very careful what they get into.

We shall miss him greatly, but I hope that he will not be a stranger here, as he is not to his former college. We look forward to breaking bread with him at the Long Table, just as at high table. After a lifetime of political service, we wish him and Caro and the family a long, well-deserved and happy retirement.

I turn to the Bill at hand and do so in my capacity as the chairman of the Heritage Railway Association. It is an unremunerated position, so it does not need declaring, but, as the Minister knows, it is a richly rewarding one, because he was my immediate predecessor —he had to give it up to become our Rail Minister. In that capacity and in his time at Network Rail, he did a huge amount to make sure that the celebrations last year for the 200th anniversary of the railways were so richly marked. And, of course, this year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of heritage railways with the celebrations at Talyllyn in Wales, the first of the preserved railways.

Across the United Kingdom, our heritage railways welcome more than 13 million visitors each year and generate upward of £600 million for our economy. They do so against great challenges. We have made great strides, not least with the Government’s support and the long-running campaign of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, to make it easier for young volunteers to help out on our heritage railways—that was clarified in the Employment Rights Act last year—but there are many challenges still.

The Government’s support this year through the Great British Summer Savings scheme, alas, does not help most heritage railways. As transport is zero-rated for VAT, they are unable to pass on any savings, because they do not get any from the scheme the Government have announced. If they are holding a static event, they often do so with an external provider and if that provider, often a large multinational, sells the ticket, it is the provider that accrues the benefits in VAT. I know that the Heritage Railway Association has written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on these matters but has not yet had an answer. I hope that the Minister can encourage his colleagues at the Treasury to do so on these detailed points.

I want to touch on three areas in looking at the Bill with a heritage lens. The first, I hope, is the easiest to deal with. It is in Clause 32, on the potential powers over rail assets. The wording at Clause 32(4) describes an “additional railway asset” as

“any network, station or light maintenance depot”.

I am not certain, nor are many in the heritage sector, whether that also covers assets which are not part of the main line. If the Minister is able to clarify that, whether today at Second Reading or in later stages of the Bill, it would be a helpful reassurance.

The second area concerns mainline access. Most heritage railways operate on preserved stretches of line, but a large number do so also on the mainline network, including Vintage Trains, LSL and West Coast Railways. The Minister will know of the “Polar Express”, the “Jacobite” and many more. He will be aware of the potential implications for those such as the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the North Norfolk Railway and the Swanage Railway. The granting of licences is covered in the Bill, but the onus is now placed on the Secretary of State rather than on the Office of Rail and Road. A number of mainline steam operators therefore worry that this removes the certainty that they have enjoyed regarding access for heritage operations.

In particular, they look at Clause 59, which means that GBR will be in the intolerable position of having to decide on the allocation of capacity while being a major operator itself. The architecture of the Bill sets up a tension that is different from the situation we have under the 1993 Act. There are no checks and balances written in. In the later stages of the Bill, Parliament should look at how it might give guidance on how these priorities should be applied. I hope, whether within the Bill or in the discussions we have, that we will be able to talk about the importance of leisure travel and heritage operations to our visitor economy and to inspiring the rail employees of the future and that we will be able to give some certainty to those who run those operations.

The third issue was touched on in another place at Second Reading by Liz Saville Roberts MP, who chairs the All-Party Group on Heritage Rail. It is the possibility of a heritage rail safety and standards board. The Minister will know that many examples of the progress we have made in driving up standards and safety on the railways have, sadly, followed tragic incidents. In June 2018, in the wake of the Croydon tram accident at Sandilands, the consequent Rail Accident Investigation Branch report led to a recommendation that there should be a safety and standards board dedicated to heritage rail. There is a Light Rail Safety and Standards Board, which was set up after that accident and is publicly funded. There is a Rail Safety and Standards Board for the national network, established following the public inquiry into the Ladbroke Grove disaster, which is also publicly funded. I hope to explore through the Bill whether we can make some progress on safety and standards for the heritage sector itself. The Heritage Railway Association at the moment fills that gap on a voluntary basis through the provision of volunteer-run safety and standards boards and consultation across the sector, but that is a burdensome and slow process for volunteers to run. The Bill, I hope, presents an opportunity to build on the work that they do to establish a professional and publicly funded safety and standards board for the heritage rail sector, and to follow up a recommendation that has been outstanding since 2018. I look forward to discussing all this and more with the Minister over the course of the Bill.