Mr. Patrick Long:

With a two-round process and a longer time frame more people might have participated in the first round but I am not sure that would have changed the outcome. There is a helpful table in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report which compares the number of participants in Projects Tower, Arrow and Eagle and it shows that even though Projects Arrow and Tower started with a figure of £4.12 billion and a higher degree of participation they ended up with the same number of binding offers as Project Eagle and that is what matters. That illustrates the point I tried to make earlier, that having many participants in and of itself does not necessarily maximise competitive attention. What matters is where one ends up.