Q51 Mr Touhig: Who got the money for that?
Mr Dawes: That went to offset the costs of the original contract.
Q52 Mr Touhig: The land was developed and sold for housing, yes?
Mr Dawes: That is right.
Q53 Mr Touhig: Who received the benefit of that?
Mr Dawes: It was what I think is classically called a barter deal where the cost of our project was reduced by the amount of the proceeds from the land sale.
Q54 Mr Curry: It is quite a remarkable form of planning gain, isit not,if you think about it? Itis writ large, 106, in huge type, is it not?
Sir Brian Bender: Sorry-106?
Mr Dawes: ffies, it is a section 106. I am not a planning expert but yes, it was part of the whole arrangement with the local authority and part of the land was sold to a housing association. It was transferred to a housing association and that was part of a section 106 deal.
Q55 Mr Curry: Would you say this was the most complex PFI that had yet been attempted?
Mr Dawes: I believe it probably was, yes, from my understanding.
Q56 Mr Curry: When the thing first went out to tender, before you got to the preferred bidder stage, how many people were bidding?
Mr Dawes: We had, I believe, ten expressions of interest, and that got down to four bidders. It then reduced it to two. One was Osborne and one was Laser.
Q57Mr Curry: When you got down to four and then down to two was that reduction on the basis of the financial advantage or were you taking into account the technical capability to deliver the project?
Mr Dawes: Oh, very much so. It was an overall assessment of value for money of the bids. There was a whole series of factors that came into that assessment, one being, as you say, technical capability. The other one which came in, I think as the Report mentions, was the planning risk. Certainly one of the issues with the Osborne proposal was the question as to whether they could achieve the planning solution that they put forward, so the assessment was on a range of things.
Q58 Mr Curry: When you say "the planning solution", what do you mean by that?
Mr Dawes: The way that they were going to develop the site.
Q59 MrCurry: So it was not to do with whether they could deliver the labs to spec?
Mr Dawes: Both, yes. It was a series of things, partly the question, had they demonstrated that they understood what the specification was about, and I think our assessment was that they had not done enough work on that particular aspect.
Q60 Mr Curry: What was the process by which the spec was drawn up? I assume that the scientists that work in this National Physical Laboratory are (a) at the absolute top of their profession, (b) there probably are not very many of them, and (c) they probably do not have many competitors in the UK. Is that right…?
Mr Dawes: Yes. They have unique capabilities, I think.