THE GOVERNMENT has been warned that it must not bias its decision about Crossrail rolling stock in favour of a British builder. The competition to build 600 vehicles worth an estimated £1 billion starts tomorrow, amid warnings that the future of the British train building industry is in the balance.
The decision to award the £1.4 billion Thameslink rolling stock contract to Siemens last year meant that the work was lost to Britain's last train-building factory in Derby, which is owned by Bombardier.
Although Siemens was named as preferred bidder last June the contract has yet to be signed off, although this is expected shortly.
Even while the Thameslink deal remains unconfirmed, the Department for Transport is now inviting tenders to build the Crossrail fleet – a contract which some industry observers had speculated would be the natural successor to the Thameslink work and likely to be won by the same company.
Protestors in Derby have been maintaining that this must not happen, because although Bombardier has given its Litchurch Lane works in Derby a stay of execution after winning a contract to build 130 Electrostar vehicles for Southern, its future after 2014 is still uncertain.
But as the Government prepared to begin the Crossrail procurement process, one of the contenders fired a warning shot. Siemens said that ministers and officials must not show any 'national bias' when reaching their decision about who the builder of the 60-train fleet should be.
The UK representative of Siemens, Steve Scrimshaw, told the Guardian that he was expecting a 'fair playing field'.
"Anything else would be anti-competitive and could have long term damaging consequences for a competitive Britain that is open for business." he said. He also defended the outcome of the Thameslink procurement process, maintaining that it had been 'fair and transparent'.
Supporters of Bombardier in Derby do not agree. They are bitterly critical of the fact that the wider economic benefits of awarding the Thameslink contract to the Derby works had been disregarded, although they say that EU law did not prevent this.
The government said that the terms of the Thameslink contract had been drawn up by the previous Labour government, and that these were binding. No such restriction affects the Crossrail contract, which can start with a blank sheet of paper.
Apart from Bombardier and Siemens, the other contenders for the Crossrail contract are Spanish CAF and Japanese Hitachi.
Hitachi has already achieved preferred bidder status to provide the next-generation Intercity Express fleet in Britain, while CAF has just won a contract to build new trams for Midland Metro.