Q21 Jon Trickett: In this case would you say that it was not necessarily apparent to all the bidders that there was an opportunity to bid for other land which was almost an uninvited opportunity in a way? Would that be slightly exaggerating the situation?
Sir John Bourn: Yes, that is right.
Q22 Jon Trickett: One had to be a mixture of a land developer and Sherlock Holmes to discover that there were additional 10s of acres-in this case 100 acres-available, and not all of the bidders were aware of that, and it is clearly the strong view of the NAO, representing an independent view about how the public purse should be managed, that it would be best for the public sector to clearly state what is available to bid against, and you failed to do that, did you not? You may say in this case that actually it does not matter because at the end of the day you got value for money, is your case; but, nevertheless, you did operate in a way, did you not, which cannot demonstrate that value for money was achieved in this matter?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I am sorry but I really do not think we accept that proposition. There had been huge market tests. There was a lot of evidence that people were interested in the land. Nobody was told that they could not have a debate about land in relation to it; what they were told was the primary purpose as well was to find a sustainable use for the Dome. When Jones Lang LaSalle were given their marketing brief to go back for the second competition they were told to go back to everybody who had expressed an interest, including those who just expressed an interest in the land, to make sure that no potential opportunities were missed.
Q23 Jon Trickett: But if I sell my car it would not necessarily be the assumption of those who want to buy my car that the garage is also available for sale, and that appears to be the defence that you are putting up: "We did not say it was not available for sale and therefore the developers should have divined that it was for sale." That is really a curious way of reasoning, is it not?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Everybody was shown the full extent of EP's landholdings on the Peninsula site; they were also shown which bits were absolutely available with the Dome proposition but at no stage was anybody prevented from talking about what other land they needed, and during the course of the discussions that have gone on people had been talking about what land they needed. The reasons that they were told and indeed expressed interest in not going ahead was because very few of them wanted to be involved in finding a sustainable use for the Dome itself.
Q24 Jon Trickett: That comes back to the first point I was making. I want to find out what the value of the land was under the Dome, and the first point I was making was that it might have been better, might it not, to have marketed the 100 acres separately because then we could have been known with absolute certainty what the value of the land on the market was at that time, and then to have used the cash that was generated from the sale of the land to cross-subsidise the Dome if that was something we still wanted to do. That would have been, first of all, clear in terms of value for money; secondly, transparent. What we now have is a lack of transparency and a lack of demonstrable value for money, do we not?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I do not think there is a lack of demonstrable value for money; I think the Report says that this is a deal that could achieve value for money, and indeed to the best of my knowledge Chesterton advised the NAO about that point as well.
Q25 Jon Trickett: You have made your point and I have made mine. I want to ask you what you think the value of the 68 acres would have been had the Dome simply been no longer there?
Dame Mavis McDonald: May I ask John to reply to that one?
Mr Walker: I do not have the information of-
Q26 Jon Trickett: You must know how much the 100 acres is worth?
Mr Walker: What we did, we valued the 170 acres with and without the Dome and the value that we achieved with the Dome is a higher value than without the Dome, something in the order of £30 million, which actually is the basis of the division of proceeds with the NMEC. The reason for that is that because of the type of activity within the Dome it impacts less on the traffic measures on the rest of the Peninsula; in other words the timing of people attending events in the Dome is different to the timing when people are commuting to and from work, either from the Peninsula or to the Peninsula which enabled a higher level of density on the rest of the Peninsula.
Q27 Jon Trickett: That is a fair crack at further obfuscation, if I might say. I did not say what would it cost to provide transport infrastructure and deduct that from the cost of the land and then tell me what that is worth; what I said was is how much is the land worth per acre, and I will multiply it by 70 myself? Surely you know how much the land is worth?
Mr Walker: The overall land?
Q28 Jon Trickett: How much is it now? Tell me the top value of the land and I will divide by 170 and multiply by 70, or tell me what the value of the 70 acres is?
Mr Walker: The current value of the land, which the market tested at 2004, of the whole of the Peninsula was something in the order of £170 million.
Q29 Jon Trickett: So it is £1 million an acre, is it?
Mr Walker: That was our current value.
Q30 Jon Trickett: So it would be £70 million then, the land that the Dome was sitting on?
Mr Walker: If the Dome was cleared because obviously there is a cost in demolishing the Dome.
Jon Trickett: No doubt another Member might ask what you actually achieve for that £70 million, but my time has expired.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr Trickett. Mr Williams.