Q101 Mr Touhig: You have a lot of landscape, have you not? Greenfield.
Sir David Normington: It was brownfield. The traffic and transport consultants because the transport and traffic was a big issue, and then some other, smaller amounts; but those were big amounts. As I have said to the Chairman, I think it is necessary if you are embarking on a project of this size to have professional advisers.
Q102 Mr Touhig: I wrote down what you said to the Chairman. No way would you have embarked on a project like this without professional advisers-the advice of experts.
Sir David Normington: You cannot purchase and build a site like this and contract with people without having experts on your side.
Q103 Mr Touhig: Can I share a little bit of advice I was given many years ago by a friend called Ray Owen, who is now dead? He said: "Beware of experts. Experts built the Titanic. Ordinary folk like you and me, we built the Ark". It may be, Sir David, that, with every submission for a major project to ministers, you should put that on page 1.
Sir David Normington: I think that it is very wise advice.
Q104 Chairman: You did not need to go to experts, because there were local people. Again, could I put another couple of questions from the Member of Parliament who has been talking to local people? You said just now that one of the advantages of this concept was that we would know where they, the asylum seekers, were, because they would be on a single site. However, as the Member of Parliament says: "What was crazy about this scheme was that there was absolutely nothing to stop asylum seekers walking out the camp, going to Bicester railway station and getting on a train". What sort of policy was that, Sir David?
Sir David Normington: I do not think that we are able to detain people in these circumstances. That is what they can do at the moment if we disperse them to Grimsby or to somewhere else.
Q105 Chairman: There is no difference-except, as Mr Mitchell said, "out of sight, out of mind" on a field outside Banbury.
Sir David Normington: No, the proposition was that they would be under curfew and-
Q106 Chairman: Under curfew?
Sir David Normington: . . . they would be processed much more quickly, on site, with the aim of getting them through the process.
Q107 Chairman: During this curfew, nothing to stop them going to the local railway station?
Sir David Normington: Except that the transport was rather poor-but, yes.
Q108 Chairman: That is all right then! He has put another point, which I think is a good point. He says to me: "Every single organisation concerned with the welfare of refugees-from the Law Society, the BMA, the Immigration Advisory Service, some ten or 12 national organisations-signed a joint statement saying that this proposal was a crazy idea and would not wash". He asks you, Sir David, "In devising asylum policy in the future, what notice will be given to such organisations concerned with the welfare of refugees?"
Sir David Normington: We always take advice from a whole range of people. I have to say, and I am not going to duck this, this was a decision about a policy taken by ministers, and therefore I am right at the limits of my ability to comment on this. This was a policy announced in the White Paper to Parliament by the Home Secretary of the day, and it certainly attracted a lot of controversy. The way in which we deal with asylum seekers is a very controversial issue, and all the people you mention are constant interlocutors of ours on this subject.
Ms Homer: I think that the Refugee Council were involved in many of the discussions, and indeed came up with some variant propositions. We would always seek to take advice from those lobby groups as we develop policy.
Chairman: Your last questioner is Mr Bacon.
Q109 Mr Bacon: To what extent, if at all, did the Accounting Officer brief ministers on the consequences of the negative net present value of the project?
Sir David Normington: I am afraid I just do not know that. I have no evidence either way. Until May 2004, when the submission, which was "Shall we go ahead now or not?"-which was a very full submission and went first to the Accounting Officer and then to the Home Secretary-I assume, but I am afraid I do not have the evidence of it, that there was then a discussion between them about it.2
Q110 Mr Bacon: Can you find out more?
Sir David Normington: I could try. I could ask.
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