Your favourite government department (yes, him again) is apparently being sued for conducting the procurement process for the ferry contract shenanigans in secret. And we know how well that went.
Eurotunnel claim they weren’t given the chance to bid for contracts (or I assume parts of contracts seeing as it was split 3 ways in the end); Fayling says it was because he knew they didn’t have the capacity and it was for maritime carriers only.
Q1 Wouldn’t you speak to the largest freight carrier in this area and see what they can do to flex their capacity – maybe they couldn’t do it all but every bit would be useful.
Q2 How much capacity is provided by no ships?
I said at the time it was weasel words – along the lies of ‘we’ve conducted due diligence and there’s nothing that would preclude Seaborne from participating in a contract with the government’. (So could I, I don’t have a criminal record / been disbarred from running a company, etc. I can’t run freight for them though….) Now I wonder if the procurement process was even fishier.