Q31 Nigel Griffiths: Those are built into the bed space costs, are they?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q32 Nigel Griffiths: If you strip them out, do you know what the cost is of the accommodation?
Sir David Normington: I am afraid I do not know that, no.
Q33 Nigel Griffiths: In terms of your previous answer regarding your consideration of its future use, have you had a dialogue with the local Member of Parliament about the most suitable future use?
Sir David Normington: As far as I know, we have not had that conversation.
Chairman: He is here now, so have a dialogue now if you want!
Q34 Nigel Griffiths: Presumably we own the land, do we?
Sir David Normington: We own the land, and in fact it is showing on our books, I think, at £4.6 million.
Q35 Nigel Griffiths: When RAF Newton was under consideration, with hindsight, was that not a more attractive, less controversial site?
Sir David Normington: We did not get planning permission for that, on the grounds that it was an unsuitable use for a rural site. That too went to the Secretary of State, and in that case the Secretary of State ruled against the Home Office.
Q36 Nigel Griffiths: How many acres is this on?
Sir David Normington: I am afraid I do not know that.1 RAF Newton, do you mean? I am afraid I do not know. It was thought to be an unsuitable site in that kind of rural area. This was a brownfield site.
Q37 Nigel Griffiths: What about urban brownfield sites? It looks about 50 hectares to me-something like that.
Sir David Normington: I understand that the possibilities of applying for planning permission on something like 40 sites round the country were looked at. I do not have all the details of those, but we could easily provide them. We tried to find land which was land we had a good chance of purchasing, and obviously quite a bit of this was redundant MoD land.
Q38 Chairman: You did mention the local Member of Parliament. He has passed me a note and I do not know why I should not put it to you. Why should I not put it to you, as he knows more about it than anybody else? He says-from the local Member of Parliament-"Despite the Home Office spending £30 million, not a blade of grass was disturbed, not a single brick laid. What has the Home Office learned about contracting procedures, because Global Solutions"-that is the company-"walked away with a large amount of money for doing nothing?"
Sir David Normington: It is a fact that a substantial amount of money was spent and all that there is to show for it is a semi-derelict site, which the local MP will know a lot better than I do. Of course that was not the intention of those who acquired the land.
Q39 Chairman: What have you learned about contracting procedures in the future, so that companies are not walking away in the future with large amounts of our money for doing absolutely nothing?
Sir David Normington: The reason that GSL walked away with some money was because, of course, a decision was taken to go ahead with the project and to sign the contract. That was done in the summer of 2004. Once the contract was signed, there would be cancellation costs. It is there on the record that two lots of costs were then incurred. One was the cost of the work that GSL had done and the other was the cancellation costs of the project. The critical decision was the one to go ahead. Of course everybody locally was opposed to it but, within the Home Office, including the Home Secretary, it was decided to go ahead. Planning permission was eventually obtained-outline planning permission-although at the point of withdrawing I think that we were about to run into opposition to the specific plans as well. It may have been that there would therefore have been a further delay. There are a lot of lessons here about how you draw up business cases, what happens if it is a very prolonged process, and how you should not only look again at your costs and your benefits but also at what the policy environment is in which you took the original decision and you now need to take one three years on-where it is quite clear that, as you said earlier, the position has moved on.
Q40 Geraldine Smith: I note the figure is £30 million for absolutely nothing, which happens to be the same amount of money that it would have cost to implement the police pay increase this year; but, of course, that was too huge a sum for the Government to do. We are therefore talking about serious amounts of money here. I find it incredible. We were talking about hostel-type accommodation for around 750 asylum seekers-and you did not anticipate the degree of opposition? What planet do you live on?
Sir David Normington: Those who were looking at this-you can see it on the face of the papers, which I have looked back at-did anticipate that there would be opposition locally and did envisage that there would be opposition during the whole planning process, leading to a public inquiry. They did not envisage that it would then be appealed from the Secretary of State to the High Court and then to the Court of Appeal. That is what greatly- doubled-the time that the consideration took. They did anticipate the first half of it but not the second half.
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