Further Deadline Slide In Thameslink Fleet Contract 'Lies and Deceit' Fiasco

RAIL UNION RMT today told the Government to end two years of lies and delays as another deadline for signing off the Thameslink/Siemens fleet contract has been allowed to slide by in a transport fiasco that outstrips even the West Coast Mainline shambles

In an interview with the Derby Telegraph in January, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said that the £1.4 billion deal would be signed off with winning bidder Siemens "by the end of March". But moving into April, the deal for 1,200 carriages still remains unsigned as yet another promise is broken in a betrayal of UK train building that tracks all the way back to June 2011 – nearly two years.

“As another bogus deadline crashes past its time for the government to end two years of lies and call a halt to the Thameslink/Siemens fiasco which has left British train building on death row." - Bob Crow

As a result of the continuing chaos, train building in the nation that gave the railways to the world is left hanging by a string and the release of rolling stock across the rail network is backed up by an incredible THREE years. The government now face the prospect of having to run diesel stock on newly electrified lines in the North West as trains that were supposed to be released back into the central pool from the Thameslink replacement programme are going to be running from Luton down to south London indefinitely.

The long drawn out Thameslink fleet crisis has forced the DfT and the Mayor to go the logical, efficient and deliverable route of public procurement for Crossrail with RMT leading a campaign to ensure that those trains are built at Bombardier in Derby and demanding that Boris Johnson supports that call to save train building in Britain.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“As another bogus deadline crashes past its time for the government to end two years of lies and call a halt to the Thameslink/Siemens fiasco which has left British train building on death row.

“This shameful scandal, bound up in the incompetence of this government, a complete disregard for British manufacturing jobs and the financial chaos in Europe, must not be allowed to drag on any further and the minister should have the guts to admit him and his predecessors have got it wrong two years down the line.”