POL00028615 - Letter from Paul Rich, Post Office, to John Roberts cc Stuart Sweetman, Tim Brown and Mena Rego on the latest proposal from ICL for a “deferred payment proposal”, communicated by DTI - 10 May 1999

Evidence on official site

POL00028615

POL00028615
10/05 ‘99 16:45 FAX! DEVELOPMENT DIR : @oor
RECEIVED 1.0 MAY 1999
TWwiess
IN CONFIDENCE .

To: John Roberts . Copy: Stuart Sweetman

Tim Brown

Mena Rego
From: Paul Rich ; Date: 10 May 1999

Subject: HORIZON - LATEST REQUEST FROM DTI

1 Sibbick phoned Stuart late lunchtime with a “deferred payment
proposal” from ICL (apparently, I think DTI had requested it) - attached.
Byers was keen to tell colleagues he could smooth the public sector cash
outflow peak in 2003 to 2005. Sibbick asked Stuart for an initial and quick
view from us. Stuart asked me to deal as he was with Girobank’s MD this
afternoon.

2 Having briefly consulted Tim Brown/Schroders our answer (with the
usual caveats) is:

- yes, if it has no adverse impact on our commercial case/cash
flow/P&L and is backed by Government as part of our funding
proposal (i.e. now to include any extra interest charges from ICL)

. no, if it affects us adversely commercially by us taking the interest hit
(suspect this was the real question).

3 I told Sibbick this at 4.30pm today, and have sent the fax attached to
confirm. We have also spent the day reconciling KPMG’s numbers to ours for
him.

4 Sibbick told me that the briefing going to the PM tonight has had some
last minute revision from HMT heavily supporting termination. There is a
risk that B3 is no’ finally dead either, from HMT’s view We will see.

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