Whether it will announce the final outcome of the tendering exercise for the maintenance of trunk roads.

I confirm the award today of contracts for the maintenance of trunk roads in Scotland from 1 April 2001.As provisionally indicated in my response to Des McNulty on 23 January 2001 (question S1W-12726), the successful bidders in the competitions held for the four Operating Company areas were BEAR Scotland Limited for the North East and North West Units and AMEY Highways Ltd for the South East and South West Units.The competition for these contracts, worth over £350 million over five years, and part of a record level of increased funding for transport in Scotland, was run in accordance with UK and EC law. The contracts have now been awarded, following the report of an independent review, by Halcrow in association with Price Waterhouse Coopers, of the use of quantities in the tender assessment process. This report, published today, has demonstrated that the use of substitute quantities from the local authority consortia which submitted bids does not alter the identification of the winning bidder. This means that the bids from AMEY and BEAR Scotland Ltd represented the best value for money and the contracts have been awarded to these companies accordingly.The Scottish Executive's objective is to ensure high standards in maintaining our trunk roads while securing best value for money for the taxpayer. The award of these contracts achieves that and offers a saving on existing costs of £75 million over five years.Savings have not been at the expense of quality. Those selected to tender all had a proven record in trunk road management and maintenance. In careful scrutiny all tenders met quality standards and only then were cash bids assessed. Stringent quality requirements in the contracts should lead to standards being above those in existing contracts.We consulted widely before inviting tenders and explained fully in advance how the tender process would work. It was conducted equitably, transparently and fairly. This has been confirmed by three Court of Session judgements and the independent audit.In the case of all four contracts, the winning bid, as previously announced (question S1W-12726), was substantially below the comparable cost of the current contract for the equivalent work even though qualifying standards had been set higher in the new contracts.I fully understand that this outcome will be disappointing to local authorities, but for all four contracts, the local authority contractor bid was above the comparable cost of the current arrangements for the equivalent work.In view of the wide public concern expressed on this point, I invited each of the bidders for the four contracts to allow the figures for their bids to be published. Each of the bidders for the North West contract has agreed to the making public of this information for their competition. For the other areas, not all bidders authorised publication. The following table, giving the information which the Executive is able to release, demonstrates very starkly the scale of the differences in the bids received.£ millionBid Values | Comparable cost at historic rates and prices | Comparable costs frombest bids | Comparablecosts fromLA Consortium Bid
South East | 68.7 | 52.4 | See Note 1
South West | 119.5 |