Lord Lea of Crondall
Main Page: Lord Lea of Crondall (Non-affiliated - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Lea of Crondall's debates with the Department for Transport
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
My Lords, it is not resolved yet. The noble Lord is quite right that there are two signalling systems. One is needed in the central portion in order to meet the productivity requirements. Engineers are working through the issues of transitioning from one system to another, but the trains will not need to stop in order to transition the system.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, the Minister referred to the six tunnel-boring machines. Is he aware not only that all six machines were imported but that the reason they were imported is not that in a competitive tender they were more competitive than British tunnel-boring machines but that there is no such thing as a British tunnel-boring machine? Would it not be useful to ask the Department for Business to do a study of why, in this potentially hugely growing market world wide, we have no capacity in this country?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord is right that the tunnel-boring machines were not made in the UK. Each one costs about £10 million, which is a relatively small proportion of the overall project. UK businesses have benefited from the award of 97% of the contracts in the Crossrail supply chain, with 58% of contracts awarded to SMEs and 43% awarded beyond London and the south-east.