UK Politics

To add onto my previous reply, buying trains isn’t like you or I buying groceries or even the NHS buying pharmaceuticals. If you or I don’t like Tesco’s products or prices we can cross the road and go to Asda (or Morrisons or Aldi or Waitrose etc) with no consequences or interruption of supply at all for us.

Likewise for the NHS if they don’t like the terms for a drug from generic supplier A, they can buy from generic supplier B. And for many drugs produced as generics there are large manufacturers who are kitted out to do this at reasonably short timeframes with shortfalls from switching suppliers that can be covered from strategic supplies.

Trains on the other hand have working lifespans in decades (sometimes too many decades!). We don’t have spares just sat about as they’re hugely expensive assets, so if you want a different one you have to buy a new one. Buying new ones is a lengthy process that takes years for development, manufacturing, testing, driver training and modifications to infrastructure (power requirements, clearances, platforms alterations etc). You can’t be without trains either as the country requires the trains to run reasonably reliably for a huge amount of economic activity. So it isn’t a simple matter of deciding one is leaving of one train supplier and just going to another. So they kind of have you over a barrel in that sense. It’s a very poor negotiating position.