National Railway Museum and Ownership of National Assets

John Glen Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I speak both as a railway enthusiast and an officer of the all-party group on heritage rail, which is particularly interested in ensuring that locomotives are in steam and that people see them running. I have visited York on many occasions and the days on which the locomotives are in steam draw the real crowds. Will the Minister assure us that if locomotives are transferred, whether to Swanage or wherever, they can be seen operating on the many preserved lines we have up and down the country?

[John Glen]

The principle behind decisions on disposal and dispersal of assets are designed to maximise public exposure to fully functioning assets, so that as many interested people as possible are brought into the country’s museums. I cannot give categorical assurances on exactly how the assets will be displayed and used, but I imagine that is the aspiration in every case.

That recent development in Swanage demonstrates that the move there was in the best interests of the engine and the public who want to see it. Swanage Railway has a long historical association with the T3 and receives more than 200,000 visitors a year. In the long term, it hopes to fully restore the engine to steam and increase its accessibility to the public. Those goals may not have been possible for the National Railway Museum, given the range of issues that it has to deal with. For those reasons, the National Railway Museum and trustees of the Science Museum felt that Swanage Railway would be extremely well placed to look after the engine and display it to a wider audience.

The news of the transfer was generally well received, both locally and with the descendants of the locomotive’s designer, William Adams. Indeed, only Steam Railway magazine, to which the hon. Member for Luton North contributed, raised any concerns. No other organisations have come forward to say that they wanted to acquire the T3. The museum abides by the Museums Association’s code of ethics on disposals and best practice. That includes advertising objects for disposal in some circumstances. The museum has committed to going above and beyond that and will advertise every rail vehicle disposal to ensure that the best home can be found for these important objects.

More broadly, the question of how to make disposals sensibly and ethically is taken very seriously by the museums sector. The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) asked about the Mendoza review of museums in England. That will report soon and will look at collections management, including disposals. On funding, some proposals are being examined for how we can encourage better collaboration between big national museums and regional and local museums. I hope that that will provide more opportunities in due course.

In conclusion, although I understand and appreciate the sincere concern of the hon. Member for Luton North that the national collections are well managed, I do not agree that the disposal of the T3 engine should be re-examined. I understand that the National Railway Museum has invited him to visit the museum to discuss the matter in person. I encourage him to take up that offer, because I think that such a meeting would allay many of his fears. I have every confidence that the museum has managed, and will continue to manage, its collections to ensure that it can inspire its visitors, but I will continue to observe the sector closely in my role as Minister.