Railways: Train Design Debate

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Department: Department for Transport

Railways: Train Design

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts
Thursday 12th January 2012

(12 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Earl Attlee Portrait Earl Attlee
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My Lords, the noble Lord has strayed a little from the Question, but I am confident that there is good news and I will write to him with further details.

Lord Davies of Oldham Portrait Lord Davies of Oldham
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My Lords, the House will recognise that the Government have had a somewhat torrid time with the carriage supply since the Siemens contract. However, would the Government take a constructive approach in these terms: can we not reduce the number of designs of carriages in order that suppliers work to a much more restricted form of contract and thereby provide much more cheaply the carriages that we all know we need?

Earl Attlee Portrait Earl Attlee
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On the noble Lord’s first point about the Siemens contract, he will understand that we operated the procurement process set up by the previous Administration. We look forward to the NAO investigation that will probably take place after the contract award in order not to interfere with the process. The noble Lord’s second point is an extremely good one. We have too many types of rolling stock. One difficulty is that the rolling stock has a 30-year life cycle and it is quite easy to end up with a large number of areas, but the noble Lord is absolutely right.