Extracts from UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 584-i
House of COMMONS Oral EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE the Transport Committee on the Work of the Department for Transport Wednesday 12 September 2012
Permanent Secretary, Department for Transport: … we are trying to take a more sophisticated and more evidence-based approach to the assessment of risk. That involves more detailed financial models being supplied by bidders and a more detailed scrutiny of those financial models by the Department. Critically, it involves an assessment, which is never going to be entirely free from some element of judgment, but, in so far as we can, we have sought to make an assessment of what level of financial risk a particular bid involves, and then adjusting the amount of capital that the bidder has to put at risk as part of its bid to us to reduce the risk to the taxpayer ...
… I do not want to get into too much of the detail about the bid, because some of this is commercially confidential; it is also, as I say, subject to legal proceedings. We looked at the profiles for all the bids and made an assessment of the level of risk involved for the taxpayer that was attached to those profiles. We also made a judgment overall as to which of the bids offered the best value for money for taxpayers, and the judgment on that was very clear-very clear by a significant margin ...
… We are always looking to make sure that our methodology is absolutely the best that we can make it …
Secretary of State for Transport: I would hope the Department will always learn if things have gone wrong.
What a difference 21 days make. Today the Department has announced that the award of the franchise for the West Coast mainline to First Group has been cancelled & that three (unnamed) civil servants have been suspended.
Links
DfT Press Notice: West Coast Main Line franchise competition cancelled
DfT Press Notice: West Coast Main Line franchise competition cancelled – update
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