Railways: Thameslink Rolling Stock Contract

Lord Broers Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has never been fined in respect of an EU infraction and Her Majesty’s Government have no intention of allowing that to happen. I hope that the noble Lord fully accepts the benefits of competition. It would be most peculiar to keep accepting bids that were not competitive.

[Lord Broers]

Does the Minister agree with me that this is just a symptom of a long-term problem whereby we have failed to co-ordinate our R&D expenditures, our government procurement and our encouragement of industry to put itself in a competitive position? We really must co-ordinate these things across the board so that our bid is clearly the strongest. I declare my interest as chairman of the Transport Knowledge Transfer Network of the Technology Strategy Board, which is trying to do these things but with precious little resource.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely good point. Another point concerns the need to schedule work such as rolling stock and other projects in order to avoid a situation of feast and famine. The McNulty report addresses that issue.