Lord Davies of Oldham
Main Page: Lord Davies of Oldham (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Davies of Oldham's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
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
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
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.