Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost to the public purse has been of (a) expenditure on the procurement process for and (b) legal advice around cancelling the Seaborne freight deal; and what the estimated cost of replacing that contract with another firm is.

For all three freight contracts, the combined costs of external legal, financial and project assurance advice up to the end of December 2018 were approximately £800,000. Subsequent costs up to termination cannot yet be derived as contracts are still live and invoices pending.

We have made no estimate of the cost of replacing the Seaborne Freight contract with another. However, the contract reflected estimated market rates.