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It seems to me that had Bombardier put in the best all round bid they would have won the work!
I gather that the Siemens bid reflected the different type of procurement world we are in and the Bombardier bid was traditional and hadn't moved with the times.
The Competition and State Aid legislation at UK and EU level, supports "Value for Money" Tendering. As far as I can tell Siemens came out on top on the last tender and it should be up to the "Home" product to improve its price; quality of Product etc if it hopes to win the Thameslink contract.
Deliberately distorting the situation in favour of a lower quality bid, is counter to the law and common sense. The UK needs to wake up and start producing quality goods and services, at reasonable prices, that people around the World actually want.
They are waking up too late. All the relevant points were made the last time you ran this issue/subject but since then and following the £7b takeover of a Cambridge based UK software company by HP (I think) a junior government minister was being interviewed saying that we needed to be more pro-UK and that we could be in bother if we let foreign ownership take too much of our economy and UK ownership falls below a critical mass. It bears out what a Deutschebank spokemsan said in a BBC radio interview when asked why the UK was lagging in coming out of recession well behind the likes of Germany and he more or less said that it was because we didn't make anything and it takes longer for a service based economy to pick up in a recession. We probably helped Germany and France out of recession by the number of their cars we buy since we don't have a UK owned motor industry any more even although we do actually manufacture a large number of cars in this country. If we still had Metro-Cammell as well as Bomardier at Derby we might have had a better chance of the trains being built in the UK and it's a pity Barclays in Kilmarnock were never able to follow up and develope their working with Alexanders when the Class 143 Pacers were turned out in 1985. Not the best trains in the world but they are still operating and could still be working till 2019 and they do look better than the Leyland National derived Class 142. I suppose much of the situation dates back to the hiatus created by the privatisation of BR when starved of UK orders our train builders couldn't win export orders. That's how we've ended up with the current lack of train builders! Best to suport what's left! I also think we have been inadvertantly brainwashed into thinking that there is something wrong with supporting your own home based industry. A prime example being when British Airways thought it fit and proper to remove the Union flag from their tailfins ignoring the fact that that was how people identified them and flew with them!
Yes, and hopefully the government has learned from the previous error. There's no point in buying useless product just because it is made in the UK, but if quality, price, and service are roughly equal, on a level playing field, I see no problem in awarding the contract to a British firm - being located in Britain should be an advantage in tendering for British Govt contracts.