Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how much BDUK paid Oxera to conduct a state aid evaluation of the National Broadband Scheme; how many full-time equivalent employees are working on that evaluation; how many representations Oxera received and from whom these representations were received; whether BDUK plans to publish those representations; and when BDUK plans to publish that evaluation.

To date no payments has been made to Oxera. The Invitation to tender (ITT) required suppliers undertake an evaluation of the National Broadband Scheme and it was for the bidders to judge how much resource they required to deliver the project within the timeframe. Based on an assessment of the bids against the criteria set out in the ITT, Oxera was the successful bidder. A report on the evaluation will be published in Spring 2015. As the evaluation is on-going, a final list of the respondents is not yet available, but there have been15 submissions to date.