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Better late than never

It beggars belief that any government faced with an underinvested infrastructure could fail to see the need to improve transport links

Better late than never is the sentiment that comes to mind over the decision to award the £1 billion contract to build rolling stock for the Crossrail project to Derby-based company Bombardier.

The last train-building company based in the country that gave birth to the railways has been dogged by governmental indecision and inconsistency.

London Mayor Boris Johnson and his fellow Tory Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin are congratulating themselves on the project, but it was their party that dumped it in the early 1990s on cost grounds because of a governmental economic crisis.

Even after the last Labour government reinstated Crossrail, the conservative coalition wobbled before then transport secretary Philip Hammond nailed its colours to the mast.

It beggars belief that any government faced with an underinvested infrastructure could fail to see the need to improve transport links.

But such was the hostility of the Tory Party to the railways, born of Margaret Thatcher's personal antipathy and the party's subservience to the roads lobby, that Britain missed out for too long on the wave of rail modernisation carried out in other European countries.

Equally problematic has been the obsession of both new Labour and the Tories for unregulated competition for rail industry contracts, under European Union procurement procedures.

Whatever tendering charades other countries may entertain, it would be unthinkable to imagine France or Germany presiding over the shambles that saw German transnational Siemens win the £1.6bn contract to supply rolling stock for the Thameslink project.

This was not just a matter of value for money or the interest rate offered by the German company's banking arm.

Bombardier's failure to land the Thameslink contract risked closure of its Derby operations, along with the loss of 1,400 jobs and hundreds of engineering apprenticeships for local youngsters.

The company's successful bid to build the Crossrail trains goes some way to plugging the hole caused by losing the Thameslink deal, but Britain's manufacturing sector cannot be expected to survive on the basis of such uncertainty.

Successive governments' willingness to put all their eggs in the financial services basket while deindustrialisation trundles on unhindered is short-sighted and self-defeating.

Laissez-faire government policies and failure to involve public enterprises in economic development has created an atmosphere of short-termism and state dependency among British firms.

For all their chat about entrepreneurial spirit and risk capital, too many companies are content with gorging themselves on guaranteed profits gained from one-sided public-private "partnerships" to deliver essential public services.

The private sector was given the opportunity of investing in the provision of Crossrail trains and maintenance facilities, with the government hoping to cap the public contribution at £350 million.

After a half-year of silence from the bold captains of private industry, the government announced almost a year ago that the public purse would foot the investment bill.

Under Britain's bizarre privatised railway system, rolling stock companies (Roscos) lease trains to the train operators (Tocs) as one of the mechanisms for milking passenger and taxpayer.

How can this be justified for Crossrail when the contract won by Bombardier is an entirely taxpayer-funded initiative?

It reaffirms, as have the rash of Tocs walking away from franchises that have lost their glitter, the reality that the public sector does railways far better than privateers do.

Train drivers' union Aslef Mick Whelan is right, in common with all transport unions, rail passengers and public opinion polls, to demand "a public-owned and properly integrated railway system in Britain."

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