Guernsey-based businessman and sports car driver Barrie Baxter, who has competed in the Manx Grand Prix, told the Tynwald scrutiny committee investigating the Vision Nine deal: ’I instinctively thought this was a done deal. There was the feeling we were just there as a stalking horse. We were just there to validate the process. We were urged to see it through.’

In a written submission, Mr Baxter his business partner Will Powell said they did not want to be part of a ’witch hunt’ but claimed the process they had engaged and invested in was ’highly irregular’.

’We questioned the process frequently and at one stage decided to withdraw from the process due to these irregularities,’ they said.

’We received a high degree of pressure to stay in the process from the Department of Economic Development, even though we felt the decision to appoint Vision Nine had already been made before its conclusion.’

Tynwald approved in April last year the appointment of Vision Nine as independent promoter for the TT 10 years with a possible extension for a further five years. But the contract was never signed and just seven months later the DED announced it was discontinuing the tender process.

Tynwald’s economic policy review committee has previously heard there had initially been three serious bidders who went into the final phase.

These reduced to two as North One and the other bidder - Barrie Baxter’s Tourist Trophy Company - merged their bids into one single bid.

In Mr Baxter and Mr Powell’s submission, they state: ’The bid process was questionable and flawed.

’It is, and was, clear to us that a decision had already been made to recommend Vision Nine from the outset and we communicated this frequently during the process to DED.’

He said the whole concept was ’ill-conceived’ from the outset: ’We suggested since our first engagement that the goal to ’sell’ the TT to a commercial venture was flawed - the TT relies on the goodwill of hundreds of voluntary workers to function. We identified alternative commercial approaches.

’The event is hampered by being organised and managed by civil servants and would benefit from a commercial professionalisation that we believed could have been delivered to eliminate government subsidy within three to five years.’

Mr Baxter, who has a background in sports management including involvement with the World Superbike riders and teams, told the committee: ’We had a very strong proposal.’ He said that the bid did not ’over-promise’ but anticipated growth in visitor numbers to the TT of 50 per cent - that’s up to 60,000 - over 10 years. ’We failed on that financial side of our proposal,’ he said.

But he said the information provided on the TT’s finances had been ’very sparse’. ’We struggled with information,’ he said.

He was surprised to learn before they submitted the final bid that they would be expected to take on a ’key’ individual within DED who would receive 5 per cent of whatever growth was generated. He confirmed this was a ’done deal’ between the DED and that individual.

’We were presented with a fait accompli. A negotiation that must have happened January, February 2016 where one of the employees had renegotiated a package and it included 5 per cent of the incremental revenue. That’s a substantial amount. It was an employee of the DED negotiated by one of the officers of the DED.

’Through our discussion we weren’t able to determine what that meant - which growth, over what base, over what period of time, paid on what basis?

Committee member Tim Baker MHK asked: ’This was one of the terms under which you were going to have to tender?’

Mr Baxter, who said he was funding the bid personally, replied:

’Well, we didn’t have to employ the people that were in the team but we would have been pretty daft not to. It was definitely part of our mindset that we would grow the team.’

He added: 

’Our goal was not to make inordinate profit. Our goal was to stop the bleeding, the £2.5m approximate bleed from the taxpayers.

’What we realised was there was another £2m to £2.5m of cost that wasn’t in the P&L [profit and loss account] that we were being presented with.

This was the cost of the police, health, the roads, in other departments. And so we realised the total cost to the island was somewhere in the region of £4m or £5m.’

Mr Baxter said he had concerns about the commercial relationship between Vision Nine and the Sports Consultancy and about the relationships between Vision Nine and the government built up during earlier proposals for a World Series, which could have had an impact on a fair and equitable bidding process. But he added: ’I’m not suggesting anything untoward.’

* A timeline submitted by the DED and published on the Tynwald website indicates when things started to go wrong.

Minutes of a meeting of the motorsport strategic group in May last year note:

  "DED was felt to have bound other departments to the terms of the contract without consultation.’

Furthermore: ’It was unclear who was the promoter and who was the organiser and the terms were used interchangeably.’

At a department meeting the following month it was noted that the departments of Health, Home Affairs and Infrastructure had indicated that they were ’unhappy with their perceived lack of involvement in the decision making process’.

The then chief executive Chris Corlett advised that DED had been instructed by the Chief Minister and Chief Secretary to liaise with the Attorney General’s Chambers over a review of the contract - a review that could result in the ’AG expressing a view whether it was appropriate for the department to continue with the appointment of Vision Nine’.

60,000 more visitors.....how were we supposed to get there?