First trucks, now trains: how EU rules kill off our industries

Why EU procurement rules have cost our last train-making firm a £1.5bn contract, by Christopher Booker.

By Christopher Booker
7:00PM BST 09 Jul 2011
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Tory transport ministers Philip Hammond and Theresa Villiers were furious, they told us last week, at having to award a £1.5 billion contract for 1,200 carriages for the new Thameslink railway to a German firm, Siemens, instead of a British-based one, Bombardier of Derby. This not only entails the loss of 1,400 jobs in Derby and thousands more across the east Midlands, but threatens the survival of the last train-making firm in the country which gave the world railways. The ministers say they had no choice but to give the contract to the German firm, because of the failure of Gordon Brown’s government to include conditions in the tender which would have made it possible to give the work to the British firm under “EU procurement rulesâ€