My Lords, I intend to speak very briefly about this order. I agree completely with the Minister in his tribute to the work of the board of BRBR and its staff over the 12 years or so of its existence. The Minister may remember that I spoke about the inclusion of BRBR in the Committee stage of the Public Bodies Bill on 14 December 2010. The Minister has referred to how the British Railways Board (Residuary) has gone about fulfilling its responsibilities since 2001, and I agree with him that its record has been excellent in many respects. I have been particularly impressed by how it has dealt with the 6,400 or so industrial injury and other health claims from former BR employees, to which the Minister referred in his speech. I hope that these will continue to be dealt with as expeditiously in future as they have been by BRBR until now.
BRBR has also done really well in discharging its railway heritage responsibilities, and I thank the Minister for his reference to this issue in his speech. I speak as a former chairman of the Railway Heritage Committee and the current chair of its successor body, the Railway Heritage Designation Advisory Board, which as part of the Science Museum Group has taken on the RHC’s statutory powers of designation. This is partly thanks to the efforts of the Minister, who supported us in resisting its abolition under the Public Bodies Act 2011.
Very many significant railway artefacts have found their way to BRBR stores. The Minister referred to the drawings, which are literally priceless, but there are also some wonderful paintings from the railways’ art collection. Many of those are now on public display in museums and galleries all over the country as a result of, first, the statutory designation, and then the disposal procedures of the RHC and the co-operation of BRBR.
The other great contribution that BRBR has made in this area is in supporting the Railway Heritage Trust which, under the chairmanship of Sir William McAlpine, plays a huge part in restoring and preserving historic railway buildings. BRBR has been instrumental in securing third-party funding for the Railway Heritage Trust, particularly from Network Rail. In this context —I hope that the Minister will allow me to do this—I should like to put on record my own tribute to one of the unsung heroes of Britain’s railways, Peter Trewin, who is the legal and secretariat director of BRBR. He was also the secretary of the British Railways Board. He is a lifetime career railwayman, whom I knew first when he worked with Sir Peter Parker more than 30 years ago. He has played a crucial role in ensuring that the railway takes its heritage responsibilities seriously. I should like to thank him on the record for that work.
There is one further matter that I wish to raise with the Minister. He talked about burdensome estate— the structures that were once part of the operational
railway—and that in the main these will be transferred to the Highways Agency. Can he give an assurance that this will not lead to roads being built on these remaining railway track beds? He will know from reading my recently published book that once the infrastructure has been built on, the opportunity to reopen railways on it is lost for ever. There are a number of heritage railways—I declare an interest as president of the HRA—that are looking at long-disused lines as future potential routes. We may also wish one day to restore some lines to the national network, as the demand for rail travel grows. That will not be possible if the infrastructure is converted into a road and we must not close down those options. I hope that the Minister will agree.