Campaigners went to Westminster again yesterday to put pressure on the Government to reverse its Thameslink decision. Joseph Watts was there.

In a debate dominated by the technicalities of European Union law and Government procurement it has been easy to forget the human cost of the Thameslink decision.

But campaigners who gathered in Committee Room 10 in the Palace of Westminster yesterday were determined to make sure it would not be overlooked in the corridors of power.

When the Government named Siemens as preferred bidder for the £1.4bn Thameslink contract, Bombardier announced 1,400 redundancies in Derby and raised the prospect of a halt to UK operations altogether.

Yesterday, worker Darren Barber, of Boulton Moor, was one of those who travelled down to London on a coach from Litchurch Lane to make themselves heard.

The 43-year-old, an RMT union rep, told the meeting: "One of the most damning things for me was the other week somebody came to me who had been there 30 years and he said to me 'please save my job, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm scared – If I go out there I've got nothing'.

"That made me feel worse than I did on day one when it first got announced that Siemens had won the contract.

"When you have got a grown man physically shaking and begging you to save his job – that's pressure I don't want for anybody."

Darren added: "Fingers crossed, touch wood he will get saved and that won't be because of what I do, it'll because of what we do."

Between 100 and 150 people including MPs from around the country and both Derby's Labour and Derbyshire's Tory members crammed into the room for the rally.

While all of those who spoke said the fight to push the Government to alter the Thameslink decision should go on, some also had a grave warning for ministers over what would happen if nothing changed.

TSSA union assistant general secretary Manuel Cortes argued that there was "one person and one person only" responsible for the Thameslink decision and that was Transport Secretary Philip Hammond.

He said: "We have to make sure that if the decision is not reversed, that when the time comes we make this Government pay a heavy price for their betrayal of the people of Derby.

"The only people that should be losing their jobs over this contract are Philip Hammond and his ministerial team. They are the ones who will pay the price if this decision is not reversed."

RMT union general secretary Bob Crow agreed and argued that the campaign was not about supporting one company, or one country over another, but about ensuring highly skilled train manufacture continued in Derby.

He told campaigners to keep pushing and to turn up to every event attended by any minister or any MP with a Bombardier supply-chain firm in their constituency and to raise it with them.

He said: "The reality is this, and it's pretty simple, 90% of the trains that end up in France are built in France, 93% of the trains that run in Germany have been built in Germany.

"And 90% of the trains that run in Spain have been built in Spain, and every single train that runs in Japan by law has to be made in Japan."

He went on: "More importantly is that these are real human beings out there. Forget about the pounds, shillings and pence. What about that apprentice who's two years into his apprenticeship, who can't fulfil it?

"What about the person who has given their entire livelihood to the manufacture of trains in the area of Derby?"

Other speakers included representatives of the GMB and Unite unions, Shadow Transport Minister John Woodcock and environmental campaigners, as well as workers from Bombardier's site in Crewe.

Chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee Louise Ellman said that her group would continue to keep a close watch on the Thameslink situation.

Meanwhile German Bombardier worker Johannes Huber also addressed the meeting in broken English saying that even in Germany workers felt it was fair that "British trains should be made in Britain".

Whilst there was hostility at the event toward Mr Hammond and his team at the Department for Transport, Tories Derbyshire South MP Heather Wheeler, Mid Derbyshire MP Pauline Latham and Amber Valley MP Nigel Mills all attended to back the Bombardier workers.

Mrs Wheeler said: "What we all want to see is a viable train-building business in Derby. Whatever people might shout from the rooftops, that is what we all want and so the meeting was worthwhile to reinforce that message.

"It's good that the workers in Derby know that no-one has forgotten about them and know the fantastic cross party support they've got."

Derby South MP Margaret Beckett, who chaired the meeting, said that the Government was mistaken if it thought campaigners would go away.

During the day some Bombardier workers approached Mr Hammond while he was doing a TV interview on another issue outside Parliament and demanded that he change the Government's course.

After finishing the interview the Transport Secretary spoke to the group personally and put across the Government's point of view.

A spokesman for Mr Hammond said: "We understand completely the strength of feeling about the situation in Derby and how devastated people must be if they lost their jobs.

"But unfortunately no matter how strongly people feel we are bound by the law and are unable to change the decision."