WHY IS THE TRANSPORT SECRETARY SIMULTANEOUSLY SHAFTING BOMBARDIER’S WORKFORCE AND BRITISH TAXPAYERS?

The Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, has told my local paper, the Derby Telegraph, that Bombardier has a future here. I hope he is right. You can read his interview here: http://tinyurl.com/bjmc9fr

But he said “there will be no handouts” for Bombardier even though nobody has ever asked for one. However, the Thameslink contract is being taken forward as a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and recent analysis has shown that these rail PFIs create an excessive financial burden. And yet Mr McLoughlin seems prepared to spends hundreds of millions of pounds over the odds, on what effectively amounts to a handout, to support German rather than British manufacturing.

The previous Labour Transport Secretary, Andrew Adonis, commissioned Sir Andrew Foster to review the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) for which Bombardier had provisionally lost out to Hitachi. This contract had also been commissioned as a PFI. http://tinyurl.com/c4nv2wr . The report was published after the General Election and raised serious questions about the IEP’s value for money. But the then Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond, ignored the concerns about excessive costs as did his successor, Justine Greening, who eventually signed it off last year.

Why are Tory ministers applying these double standards? They insist the austerity programme is essential. They say the diminished living standards most people are experiencing are necessary. They argue that the cuts to our cherished public services are worth it. And they urge us to believe that the shameful squeeze on social security payments are sacrifices Britain’s poorest people must make. But when it comes to procuring new trains from foreign companies, it seems these selfsame ministers are prepared to cheerfully spend public money like water.

Mr Mcloughlin told the Derby Telegraph that if he started the procurement process again it “would take a huge amount of time that wouldn't help Bombardier.” But that is simply not true. Experts agree that a new procurement process could be concluded in a matter of months and save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds in the process. Moreover, Bombardier would then be able to compete for the Thameslink contract on a level playing field.

Mr Mcloughlin is a Derbyshire MP, with constituents who work at Bombardier. He knows how important this industry is to Derbyshire and to Britain. The existing tender documentation makes it clear that he is under no obligation to proceed with Siemens. You can read the Invitation to Tender document here: http://tinyurl.com/4yoys6j.

Precisely why Patrick McLoughlin is seemingly willing to shaft Derby’s Bombardier workers and British taxpayers in favour of German workers and German taxpayers is rather mysterious. Maybe we’ll find out in 30 years when the cabinet papers are released. By which time, the British train making industry might only be a distant memory.

Of course it wouldn’t be the first time a Tory Government has destroyed home grown industrial capacity, they’ve actually got form for this. Just look at what they did in the 1980s to British Steel, British Coal and British car manufacturing to name but three. The result was hundreds of thousands of job losses and a huge upsurge in the importation of products we used to produce here.