§ Ms HarmanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many bids for the proposed private finance initiatives have been received for the proposed new hospitals in(a) Norfolk and Norwich, (b) Amersham, (c) Carlisle, (d) Swindon, (e) north Durham, (f) Bishop Auckland, (g) the Royal London hospital and (h) St. Thomas's hospital. [31881]
§ Mr. Horam[holding answer 7 June 1996]: Under EC directives and public procurement regulations, national health service trusts must publish a series of advertisements and notices in the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Community for all potential contracts exceeding specified thresholds. All the schemes referred to in the question exceeded the threshold. Trusts pre-qualify a smaller number of potential partners from the list of initial responses to the OEJC advert and issue an invitation to negotiate document to the pre-qualified consortia. Trusts draw up a shortlist of the most promising potential partners following rigorous evaluation of the responses and negotiation from which the best obtainable solution involving private finance is eventually identified. The numbers of bidders involved at the various stages of the process for the trusts referred to in the question are as follows:
- (c) The specification for the doors was written by the design team.
- The specification for the space allocated for storage and specialist trades were also included in the statement of requirement, and followed JSP 315 Scales 27(4) and 45.