PARLIAMENTARY COLUMN

Parliamentary column RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: july/august 2011 :: RMTnews 9 The government’s complete disregard for our national interests was graphically demonstrated by its decision to award the Thameslink rolling stock contract to Siemens rather than Bombardier – the UK’s last train manufacturer. The extent of the Government’s indifference was then highlighted in a parliamentary answer from the Rail Minister, Teresa Villiers, to a question tabled by my parliamentary colleague John Denham. The answer read as follows: “Department for Transport officials confirmed the result of the procurement evaluation on an anonymised basis and made a recommendation, to a Department for Transport board sub-committee meeting on 4 May 2011. The Secretary of State for Transport, ...was asked to endorse this recommendation, with the bids still anonymised, on 12 May 2011. He was informed of the bidders’ identities later that same day after he had endorsed the recommendation.” “Anonymised” means that the details of the bidder for this massive £1.4 billion train manufacturing and maintenance contract were hidden. In other words the Transport Secretary did not know when he endorsed the recommendation of his officials that he was awarding the contract to a German rather than UK-based company! The tragic reality is that rather than standing up for British manufacturing he was simply endorsing a box ticking exercise from his civil servants. This madness has led to the announcement of over 1,400 job losses at Bombardier in Derby with the likelihood of further job losses in the autumn. The plan to build the Thameslink trains in Germany also threatens at least a further 12,000 jobs in the UK supply chain. The decision could adversely impact on the prospect of a UK-based train manufacturer bidding to supply trains for Crossrail or for high speed rail. In short we could be witnessing the last stand of British train manufacturing. Of course the government is trying to blame everyone else for the catastrophe. It claims the previous government was to blame because it drew up a contract that did not allow it to take into account the impact any decision would have on UK jobs. Complete nonsense. The government had more than a year to look at the contract and it has always been in its gift to change contract terms if it chose to. In fact there is a clause in the tender documentation that gave the Transport Secretary a large degree of latitude to keep this contract in the UK. The fourth paragraph on page 16 reads: "The issue of this Invitation to Tender in no way commits the Secretary of State to award the Thameslink Rolling Stock Programme to any person or party. The Secretary of State reserves the right to terminate the competition, to award the Thameslink Rolling Stock Programme without prior notice, to change the basis, the procedures and the timescales set out or referred to in this document, or to reject any or all Proposals and to terminate discussions with any or all Bidders at any time. Nothing in this Invitation to Tender should be interpreted as a commitment by the Secretary of State to award the Thameslink Rolling Stock Programme to a Bidder." Equally preposterous is for the government to blame EU law. In the last five years Germany has had 98 per cent of their trains built domestically, in France it is 100 per cent and in Spain it is 90 per cent. All that these countries do is legally frame their contracts so that the social and economic impact of any decision can be taken into account. Chris Williamson MP, Derby North BACK BOMBARDIER R MT has called for tighter regulation of company directors after Paris Moayedi, the boss of rail company Jarvis at the time of the Potters Bar disaster, floated a new “green energy” company on the stock market. Not a single Jarvis director has received any punishment for their role in the seven deaths at Potters Bar even though the company was found partly responsible. After Potters Bar, Jarvis subsequently staggered on under the leadership of former Tory minister Steven Norris before going bust and dumping hundreds of workers out of work and reneging on wages and pensions commitments which are currently subject to RMT legal action. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that it was outrageous that the Jarvis bosses involved in the Potters Bar disaster had not only got away without any punishment but were now floating new companies on the stock market. “That shows just how lax the law is in this country when it comes to regulating company directors and we will be working with our Parliamentary group to demand tougher legislation. “Hundreds of our members ended up out of work and owed thousands of pounds when Jarvis went bust and yet top bosses like Steven Norris walked away and straight into other well-paid work like chairing conferences on the McNulty rail carve up,” he said. Sacked Jarvis workers and former Jarvis employees who have seen their pensions destroyed held a vigil outside the Leeds Employment Tribunals where a case management hearing was heard, in order to set out the future conduct of unfair dismissal applications for over 500 of the 1,400 affected ex-employees. Justice for Jarvis Workers co-ordinator Bill Rawcliffe said that Deloittes Administrators had revealed that the then Labour government’s decision to wash its hands of privatised rail workers employed by the company when it went bust resulted in workers being sacked without wages, with no proper redundancy payments and with over 3,500 pensions destroyed. “It is a scandal that we have successive governments in the UK that refuse to take responsibility for their citizens and who have no interest in protecting jobs and skills in the UK rail industry,” he said. JARVIS BOSSES OFF THE HOOK