THE NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE has decided that the government's decision to award the Thameslink rolling stock contract to Siemens rather than Derby-based Bombardier did not break procurement rules. The news came as unions lobbied Parliament, but now the last hopes of an official change of heart rest on a judicial review.
The NAO has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the £1.4 billion order for about 300 new trains, following claims that the Department for Transport was wrong not to take the wider economic effects of placing such a large contract with an overseas supplier into account.
The transport secretary Philip Hammond has maintained consistently that the rules for evaluating the bids from Siemens and Bombardier were set out by the previous Labour government and that there would not be a rethink, despite protests that as many as 15,000 jobs could have been put at risk by his decision.
Bombardier has already announced that it is almost halving the Derby workforce by shedding 1,400 jobs, although around two-thirds of these are agency staff on short-term contracts. However, many of these jobs would probably have been lost even if Bombardier had won the Thameslink contract, because several other orders for new trains are being completed at Derby this year.
Before today's Parliamentary demonstration, RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “The battle for Bombardier and the future of train building in the UK remains well and truly on. We don’t want warm words from the Government about manufacturing jobs and apprenticeships - we want them to get off their backsides and intervene now to save the ten thousand jobs under threat from the Bombardier betrayal. They will pay a political price of huge proportions across the East Midlands if they fail to take this issue seriously while there is still time.
“The Thameslink contract has been a fit up from start to finish. RMT has shown that the government spent ten times as much for advice from lawyers and accountants than engineers with more than £20 million spent on management consultants to oil the wheels of the Bombardier stitch up."
The union UNITE is still intent on challenging the decision by a judicial review, with support from Derby City Council, but Mr Hammond said recently that he now expected to confirm the Siemens deal early in the New Year.