LONDON - A BRITISH decision to award a 7.5 billion pound (S$16.4 billion) order for trains to a Japanese-led group sparked anger on Friday amid rising unemployment and recession here.

Agility Trains, a consortium including Japan's Hitachi, Britain's John Laing and Barclays banking group, was awarded the contract on Thursday for a fleet of 'super express' trains for the Great Western and East Coast main lines.

It beat a rival group Express Rail Alliance, comprising Bombardier Transportation, Siemens, Angel Trains and Babcock & Brown, which said it was 'extremely disappointed' after spending 18 months on its bid.

'Fury as Japan gets our jobs', ran the front-page headline of the Daily Express, which highlighted the contrast with Prime Minister Gordon Brown's controversial pledge to protect 'British jobs for British workers'.

Agility Trains said it would spend 70 per cent of the contract value in Britain, and create some 2,500 jobs here - and Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon said some 12,500 new jobs will be created.

But critics and the media questioned the figures, and voiced concern that a large part of the work will be carried out in at a Hitachi factory in Kasado, Japan.

'If Japan can manage to ensure the high-speed fleet that operates on its own railways are manufactured entirely at home, there is no earthly reason why Britain cannot either,' said Mr Bob Crow of the Rail Maritime and Transport union.

The announcement of the deal comes after a wave of recent wildcat strikes across Britain, mainly at oil refineries and power plants, in protest over the use of foreign labour.

The government has faced pressure to do more to defend the country's workers, with critics in particular highlighting 'British jobs for British workers' slogan used by in 2007, when Mr Brown succeeded Mr Tony Blair as premier.

Britain's long-booming economy, more heavily dependent on the finance sector than its European neighbours, sank into a recession in the second half of 2008.

Official data meanwhile showed this week that the country's jobless total was fast approaching two million.

The number of people claiming jobless benefits leapt by 146,000 in the three months to December to 1.97 million, the highest figure since 1997. -- AFP