Q141 Mr Bacon: You are the Accounting Officer. You have to sign the statement of internal control. Part of that is making sure your risk register is in shape. Did your risk register not flag up potential legal problems? You said that no one anticipated that it would go to the High Court, let alone to the Appeal Court and yet very clever people with first class degrees from the best universities in the country sit round thinking about what are all the possible risks. People write books on risk. Did nobody think about legal risk? Surely in any planning project one of the risks is not just the planning risk from the local planning authority or the inspector but that it might go further. That is a standard, pretty obvious risk, is it not?
Sir David Normington: The risks of not being able to go ahead with this were recognised and built in but, as I said earlier, the length of the planning period was underestimated.
Q142 Mr Bacon: I would like to go back to the consultancy costs, the £6.3 million underneath GSL. You mentioned that that included architects. That is presumably a separate payment from the design payments to GSL, is it?
Sir David Normington: This was about the advisers on our side of the project because some of it was about first of all developing the concept and some of it was about appraising the bids.
Q143 Mr Bacon: The previous money, the £7.559, included GSL's professional advisers and the £6.3 included yours?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q144 Mr Bacon: Is it possible that you could send us a very thorough and detailed breakdown of all these costs that come up to both the £33.6 million and the £27 million to a much higher level of detail than we see here, essentially under pretty much every heading, whether it is insurance, consulting, engineering or architects or whatever, so that we can get some handle on where it all went?7 I am sure Mr Baldry would like to know and, by the way, this would have more than paid for the A140 Long Stratton Bypass in my constituency. £26 million is the latest estimate. I would have given you £1.8 million change, Sir David.
Sir David Normington: We will certainly do that.
Q145 Chairman: You have two weeks to do that.
Sir David Normington: We will do our very best to give you the detail you want.
Q146 Mr Mitchell: After all this agitation, this has been hanging over the poor old locals for six years now. Paragraph 40 of the Report says that the Home Office is considering whether the land could be used as a detention centre for failed asylum seekers before deportation-you have not given up, have you?- and has prepared a business case. "On the basis of this future use, the Home Office has retained some £4.6 million of the capital cost incurred (besides acquisition costs and land enabling work) on its balance sheet . . . ". When will that be decided?
Sir David Normington: I cannot give a precise date but we hope it will not be too long. We are in discussions.
Q147 Mr Mitchell: What is too long?
Sir David Normington: We are in discussions with our ministers about the next phase of our asylum policy, particularly in relation to detention centres. We have several coming on stream in the next year. The question is do we need any more and if we do then there will be a question as to whether Bicester is one of the potential sites for that. We have not decided that.
Q148 Mr Mitchell: When you do decide, are any of the costs incurred, consultancy work and other payments in the design of the original proposal, going to be useful, relevant, or is it all a waste of money?
Sir David Normington: Some will be useful but I would not want to pretend to you that they will be substantially useful because a detention centre is a different thing. It is a place where you want to keep people in rather than let people come and go. It is a much better proposition because you lock people up there and you do not want them to get out.
Q149 Mr Mitchell: It may mean it will all have to be done over again then. It is different. It has security implications now.
Sir David Normington: Yes, but we have some very good models for detention centres. We are well on with one that is nearly built at Brook House near Gatwick. Colnbrook is already in operation so we have that model. I do not think it is as costly a model in terms of the preparation for it.
Q150 Chairman: That concludes our hearing and we hope that our report will try and avoid money being wasted in this way in the future. Before I end this hearing, can I just say one or two words which are nothing to do with the subject of this hearing? This is quite an historic, sad moment because it marks the very last hearing that Sir John Bourn will be here as our Comptroller and Auditor General. I know that one or two other Members also want to say a word, Sir John, but I also paid you tribute in the House of Commons and I will be giving further tributes to you in private next week with the Members of the Committee, but I do want to say publicly that I think you have been a wonderful tower of strength to this Committee.
Sir John Bourn: Thank you very much.
Mr Bacon: I would like to thank Sir John for giving me his book recently which, I regret to say, is not top of The Sunday Times best seller list although it certainly should be and I would recommend every Permanent Secretary to read it. It is called "Public Sector Auditing" and it draws on his unparalleled experience over 20 years in the office. I was counting up today the number of references to reports of the National Audit Office in the bibliography. There are over 90 as well as many report of this Committee and other select committees. It is an extraordinary achievement, but it is one that would not have been possible without his extraordinary service to this House as an officer of this House and to the taxpayer. I think we all owe him a great debt for that, so thank you very much indeed.
Mr Touhig: Can I echo what has been said. Sir John, you might seem an unlikely pin-up but you are to me because I spent 20 odd years as a local councillor helping to build up public services in my part of the world. Soon after I came into Parliament, we had a huge crisis with a college that would have collapsed, in my view, because of poor management and all sorts of other difficulties. A number of colleagues and I approached you and the speed with which you carried out the inquiry, the speed with which you gave us some alternatives and gave the corporation that ran the college alternatives for how it could be saved I think we are in your debt for, because in my part of the world that college is where all post-16 education takes place and it would not be there today, I am convinced, but for the fact of your efforts, the efforts of the NAO under your direction. I do not have a picture of you up on my wall but you are my pin-up.
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