Q21 Chairman: It is a long time to make up your mind.
Sir David Normington: It is a long time. We have decided, though, to build a number of detention centres before we consider whether to use Bicester. We are going through a process within the department now with ministers to decide what our long-term strategy should be for detention centres, which are, in my view, the most successful bit of our asylum policy. We will then in due course take a decision about Bicester. I am very sorry about it-it is obviously a very long time-
Q22 Chairman: You are very good at saying "sorry", Sir David.
Sir David Normington: It is better to say "sorry"- Chairman: I know. You are very good at it. We have had you here many times before. There is nothing wrong with saying "sorry".
Q23 Nigel Griffiths: I would like to go into a bit of the background when you were looking at options. How long was this facility envisaged to last?
Sir David Normington: The business case was over ten years. In my mind, I think it was assumed that it might last 50 years; but the business case was over ten.
Q24 Nigel Griffiths: Would it have been suitable for anything else?
Sir David Normington: I think that it could have been converted into a detention and removal centre, but to do that you would have had to make it more secure. It was being built as an open accommodation from which people could come and go-which was one of the most controversial things locally, as you can imagine, because local people were very worried about the impact on the local area.
Q25 Nigel Griffiths: Is there any evidence that, when it was planned, if the whole asylum issue changed dramatically over the course of the ten years, it had an alternative use? Was that part of the brief to the consultants?
Sir David Normington: As far as I know, it was not the brief to the consultants because I think it was assumed all through this that the asylum problem was not going to go away.
Q26 Nigel Griffiths: Looking at it now and planning now, are you asking anyone drafting such plans to look at such a dramatic change that might mean that we were spending a lot of money on buildings which did not have alternative uses? Of course, that may not be practical.
Sir David Normington: I think we have learnt the lesson that you should try, over a long period, to estimate what the policy consequences or changes might be, and actually try to build into the way you design buildings like this what alternative uses might be. That is the kind of work that is going on now, but I do not think that was done at the time.
Q27 Nigel Griffiths: If there had not been a planning delay and it had been a third built, what would have been the consequences?
Sir David Normington: If it had been built?
Q28 Nigel Griffiths: A third built. If the work had been well underway.
Sir David Normington: If it had been built, we would be using it for its purpose. There are enough asylum applicants still in the country to envisage having a 750-bed facility, which this was, where we can keep people, where we know where they are, and process them as quickly as possible; so you could still have used it. The thing was, though, it was supposed to be the first step of ten such centres. The question now, with hindsight, is whether we could possibly have made it ten centres, but we would have used it. We could have used it and I could envisage us doing so. Having said that, what we now know is that secure centres are a great deal more useful than ones that people can come and go from.
Q29 Nigel Griffiths: Which would give you more dual use in the future?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q30 Nigel Griffiths: The costs are set at some £70,000-£70,720 on page 24-per bed space. That is a lot more than you could build a modern and very high-quality house for, is it not?
Sir David Normington: It is but, as you can see, the comparisons were made with the costs of various types of prison accommodation. I think that is on page 25. The costs were broadly comparable. I think that one of the reasons why this was costly was because the intention was-and you can see it from the photograph on the front page-to have education facilities, health facilities, sports facilities and so on, so that it was a self-contained site.