Member

Finally, Amendment 17 is not related to heritage railways but is intended to do the Government a good turn by sorting out an anomaly in the provision. It relates to Translink, the Northern Ireland rail network. While the British national rail network is excluded from the provision of the Act, by defining the exclusions from the Bill in relation to Section 119 of the Railways Act 1993, the Act does not apply to Northern Ireland. Translink remains a railway that has always been in the public sector and it was not included in the British Rail privatisation proposals. Since 1948, it has been managed separately from the rest of the railways of Great Britain and, indeed, has a different track gauge. The amendment simply makes clear that the Bill is not intended to apply to Northern Ireland railways any more than it will to the future Great British Railways.