Further to your reports on the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) investigation (16 May and subsequently), bid rigging can only operate if there is a central reporting body that holds all the potential bids for the bidding contractors to manipulate.

It appears from your columns that the OFT has not investigated how such bodies operate and their relationships with their clients. I can recall an occasion when we, the design team, were permitted a rare glance into this murky underworld. All of the tenderers knew all of the bids days before the ritual of our presenting the sealed envelopes to the client, who ceremoniously open them. I remember feeling discomfort at what else the tendering network might be up to. Would it not be sensible for the OFT to establish some regulatory control over these very private organisations?

Once upon a time there was a government quango called the Building NEDC, and it published a Code for Selective Tendering. Wonder what happened to it?

Malcolm Taylor, Lancaster

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