Q101 Chair: Can I just get a feel for the size? You started with £4.3 billion, round 6 was £1.9 billion and that's come out completely, hasn't it?
Sir Bob Kerslake: If you take the whole programme, including round 6 and two other schemes, the number is £4.6 billion.
Q102 Chair: And what have you taken out?
Sir Bob Kerslake: We've taken £1.8 billion out from the 22 November announcement, which is all of the round 6 schemes and two schemes from previous rounds that got moved into a later stage.
Q103 Chair: And what are you reviewing, further to that?
Sir Bob Kerslake: Those are the ones we're reviewing at the moment in terms of the options for funding them.
Q104 Chair: So there could be more than the £1.8 billion that comes out?
Sir Bob Kerslake: No, we essentially got confirmed funding for the schemes that are in procurement. The ones where we have to look at the options for funding are what we've called the pipeline schemes that weren't in procurement. That's because of the outcome of the Spending Review.
Q105 Stella Creasy: I was just wondering if you'd had any feedback from the contractors about that, and what that then means with regard to the likelihood of their being able to move forward on these kinds of contracts. When you talk about affordability, the other way of looking at that is the risk to them in terms of bidding for these contracts, isn't it? It now poses quite a big question mark over the revenue to be made on these projects.
Sir Bob Kerslake: Well, there clearly is a negotiation that goes on with contractors about what they do and how much they're going to charge for it. So I don't think we've seen contractors saying they won't come into the PFI process, not least of which is to do with the availability of work in the current construction climate.
Stella Creasy: It's a buyer's market.
Sir Bob Kerslake: Exactly. I don't think we're seeing that as an issue. What you often have to do is go back and look at the scope of the scheme and what you're able to achieve.
Q106 Stella Creasy: So are you negotiating down or up?
Sir Bob Kerslake: In terms of price do you mean?
Q107 Stella Creasy: In terms of price, quality. Is this creating more of an uncertainty about the cost of these things or the quality of what can be delivered, when you say you have to go back again?
Sir Bob Kerslake: I don't think it's creating an uncertainty. What it has required is for those schemes that made presumptions about cross-subsidy from sales and things to go back and look at what they're trying to achieve through the scheme and see if there are ways they can bring it back into affordability. That's taken time, that's really what I'm saying
Q108 Stella Creasy: Is that going to mean a lower cost or higher cost to the public purse, ultimately?
Sir Bob Kerslake: It's not going to mean more cost to the public purse, it's more likely to mean they're going to look at the scope of what they're able to achieve.
Q109 Stella Creasy: So we won't get as much for the same?
Sir Bob Kerslake: Potentially you may get less from the scheme, or you may have to look at doing it in a different way.
Q110 Chris Heaton-Harris: Mine is a very similar point to Ian's. The National Audit Office put out the Housing Report-and the quote that Ian gave was about the 21 or the 25 projects being more expensive-and you now say you've got a comparator that you're comfortable about and you know what the costs are going to be in the future. Is that correct?
Sir Bob Kerslake: What I'm saying is, we had data before to compare on a scheme-by-scheme basis; we now have better and more systematic data to compare VFM at the point we make the decisions.