Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee, 14 Sep 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Official Report 118KB pdf

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Review of Financial Case

Item 6 concerns the review of the preliminary financial case. We will publish the information that is in paper ED1/S2/04/2/5 along with the minutes—I am conscious of the fact that, although the paper was lodged as a private paper, we are discussing it in public. The paper lays out the specification for the preliminary financial case analysis and suggests four firms that should be approached and invited to tender.

I ask the committee to agree that the draft financial case analysis specification at annex A is acceptable, that the specification should be published—we have already agreed to do that—that the organisations that are listed in annex B should be invited to submit tenders by 23 September and that the committee's consideration of such tenders should be taken in private at a future meeting. Is that agreed?

Not quite and not without comment. You ask us to agree that the financial case is acceptable, but when I go through it, a heck of a lot of questions arise in my mind, perhaps because of my lack of expertise. In accepting our nodding it through and sending it to the experts, I presume that they will deal with it and that we will then get a chance to come back on the points of concern.

That is exactly right. All that we are agreeing today is the specification so that we can appoint people to do the detailed analysis that will consider all the points that you make.

That is fine.

Thank you very much. We now move into private, so I ask that the room be cleared. The official report can disappear too.

Meeting continued in private until 12.14.