Probably should have added a smiley and yes I know he is a lawyer, hence my use of “legal treatise”, the essential thrust of my post was other factors can be taken into account, which are clearly political in nature.
I think, on thameslink, they just got it wrong. It wasn’t so much the political drivers that got it wrong, they just screwed up putting together the competition so that another company was able to win. At the same time thameslink was going on, we had another reach preferred bidder where the emphasis on social/community benefits was huge. I don’t think these decisions (certainly at that time) are driven from central government – for example one transport authority would always push on price, while another might be heavier on design. There was too much inconsistency across huge numbers of authority clients and how they structured their compeitions for politics to have too much influence.
I agree with you that politics can weigh in and say “wow, we don’t want that to ever happen again…make sure that it doesn’t” and procurements will take more of an advantage of social/community benefits requirements (if that’s what they felt is necessary to appease the voters)…but they were always there to begin with, some just chose not to put as much emphasis on them. With Crossrail, they didn’t screw up the competition. They knew who they wanted to win, knew they couldn’t afford another screw up and made sure the procurement was watertight. IMO that would have happened regardless of the politicians wading in.
At the end of the day, if you’re weighted at 95% price and 5% quality, it doesn’t matter how great you social benefits are if Le Froggies come in and undercut you 🙂