Q41 Dr Pugh: Would things like consultancy costs therefore be spread over the whole life of the partnership rather than being capable of being allocated to individual projects?
Mr Byles: They are capable of being allocated across the whole committed element of the scheme. For a typical local authority that would happen in a number of ways. If a contractor is bidding for a single wave, they would spread their costs across that wave.
Q42 Dr Pugh: You made extensive use of consultants and there is obviously a huge lump sum for consultancy hanging over the whole project which of course would not be there under the whole system. You are asking consultants to assess the value for money in the whole project at the end of the day, are you not?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q43 Dr Pugh: You will not be surprised by what they tell you, will you?
Mr Bell: It would have been rather strange if we had said that we would do all the evaluations in house.
Q44 Dr Pugh: Not if you were using consultants. We would expect you to know whether you were getting value for money for consultants. To ask PricewaterhouseCoopers to tell you whether the whole project is going well I think would get you a fairly obvious and clear answer, would it not?
Mr Bell: I am not quite sure-?
Q45 Dr Pugh: I would personally be astonished if a consultant you employed to evaluate the project were to say that the project on which you are so intensively using consultants is not going at all well. Maybe it is cynicism.
Mr Bell: I would not come to that conclusion whatsoever. I would have thought that any consultancy company that has been asked to carry out such an evaluation will have its reputation to consider. Therefore, if it is going to make judgments about the quality of the programme, it is going to have to have evidence to back up those judgments. I do not think it is just going to say, "Lots of consultants were involved. Therefore this must be a good project."
Q46 Dr Pugh: One would hope not. In connection with ICT which is a big element in the project, many of the schemes involve a long term contract related to the provision of hardware replacement?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q47 Dr Pugh: Software?
Mr Byles: For the provision of equipment and the maintenance of that equipment through time and the lifecycle of the ICT facilities is five or ten years.
Q48 Dr Pugh: I had a debate about this. I put it to the minister at the time-I do not think he is the minister there any longer-that a possible problem here is the fact that the contracts would be done with very big partners who would work right across the country and there would be a lack of involvement of smaller suppliers, either of software or of hardware. He said, "Not a bit of it. Schools are pretty free to choose what they want." They are not, are they?
Mr Byles: The schools and the local authority together choose a provider for services.
Q49 Dr Pugh: It covers the local authority?
Mr Byles: It does cover the whole-
Q50 Dr Pugh: An individual school cannot make a choice by itself, can it?
Mr Byles: It is possible for a school to opt not to be part of the managed service. It is unusual for that to take place. An alternative procurement case has to be put forward and judged as value for money for that to succeed. It would not be right to say either that this is the province of very large providers in ICT. There are 16 ICT providers in building schools for the future at the moment. One of the distinguishing features is that none of them is very large.