John Denham
Main Page: John Denham (Labour - Southampton, Itchen)
Vince Cable
The hon. Lady is absolutely right about the procurement rules. As I said, we are taking an initiative to try to address an anomaly whereby Britain appears to be uniquely open in relation to other European countries. Regarding the work force who are, sadly, affected by these redundancies, I have already announced the launching of a taskforce in Derby led by a former senior executive of Rolls-Royce to try to mobilise assistance.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
At the previous Business, Innovation and Skills questions, the House united to welcome the confidence shown by Japanese, German and Indian companies in UK manufacturing through their investment in Nissan, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover, so is it not a tragedy that in the past few weeks this British Government have put their confidence in German manufacturing to provide our Thameslink trains? Will the Minister confirm Network Rail’s estimate that in addition to Crossrail, between 12% and 25% of the 12,000 trains in Britain will need replacing over the next 10 years? What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that there is a UK manufacturer capable of designing, building and winning orders for those trains?
Vince Cable
I am surprised that the shadow Secretary of State keeps returning to this theme. I have to repeat the point that my colleague, the Secretary of State for Transport, inherited a tendering process defined in law, which, if abused, is open to judicial review and which made it absolutely imperative for him to conduct the order in the way he did. If it had been cast differently, there could have been a different outcome. We must learn from that experience. The shadow Secretary of State is absolutely right that it is in the British national interest that we have a capacity to produce locomotive equipment in this country. There will of course be a significant increase in that capacity in the north-east with the Hitachi project, but we must also ensure that future tenders for the contracts that he describes are properly constructed, which they were not in 2008.
Mr Denham
That was not a strategy for the future of the UK rail manufacturing industry. Does the Secretary of State not know that the factory in the north-east is there purely and simply because Labour Ministers were prepared to challenge a procurement process and get the right deal for UK manufacturing? Will he confirm that the Department for Transport could have run a separate funding competition? Will he confirm that Siemens still does not have a proven energy efficient bogie system for the new trains, while Bombardier does? Is it not the truth that these and other issues could have been used to get the best deal for UK manufacturing? Does he realise that it is not good enough just to blame the last lot and do nothing when it is his responsibility to ensure that we have a UK rail manufacturing industry to win orders?