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Claire makes a point about the nature of ‘choice’. I think it is well worth attempting to establish what the DIUS and /or SLC mean by choice, and also ‘customer’. It’s possible to find documents and discussion on choice in public services (see for example the Audit Commission national report 2004) but it’s not clear to me whether NMH services are a ‘public service’ in the same way as healthcare and pre-16 education. So that could the wrong track to go down in terms of thinking through what the aims of the proposed changes might be. In project management type terms, the SLC possibly have two customers – DIUS and the student? As both Nasser and Jeremy suggest, the number of quotes is not essentially about the bottom line price. It’s about quality (service delivery and product). That’s good. What is not so good is a sudden introduction of market changes which could result in reduction of service or loss of service , not through want of the service providers willingness to try but because they do not have the capacity to upscale or compete. Choice is meaningless in reality if all the variables are poor, weak or struggling to survive. Maybe some will fail to survive – what impact will that have on the student/customer? Amanda