The Vision Nine saga was a failure of government process and procedures, the Council of Ministers have accepted.

Tynwald this month will debate a scrutiny committee’s damning report into the embarrassing collapse of a project to bring in a private promoter for the TT.

The economic policy review committee report concludes that the proposal to bring in Vision Nine, approved by Tynwald in April 2016 but abandoned seven months later, was ’fundamentally flawed’.

Tynwald next week will be asked to approve six recommendations made by the committee including that a detailed economic impact assessment should be made of the TT and Festival of Motorcycling.

In a CoMin response to the report, Minister for Enterprise Laurence Skelly, who the committee said was primarily responsible for the failure of the project, said the affair showed that government itself is not ready to outsource the TT.

He said it was ’to all intents and purposes’ a failure of government process and procedures.

And he accepted: ’It is clear, in hindsight, that sight was lost of the many stakeholders involved and the department concentrated on the end result rather than the journey itself.’

Mr Skelly said the report points to areas where departments worked in isolation, from each other, from their political members and from CoMin - and that the size and importance of the TT ’clearly exacerbated’ those challenges.

And he added: ’Personally speaking, I would like to take this opportunity to stress my view of the need for a fundamental change to the method in the way government works to ensure we do not fall in to a similar trap in the future.’

The committee report concludes that the then Department of Economic Development had ’seriously underestimated’ the impact its proposals would have on other departments - and the proposal appeared to ’hit a brick wall’ when the draft contract with Vision Nine was circulated to other departments.

It said the DED relied heavily on consultants The Sports Consultancy not only for commercial advice but also for project management support and legal advice.

In Tynwald next week, committee chairman Michael Coleman MLC will ask the court to back six recommendations including that departments should not obtain legal advice from the private sector without the Attorney General’s express approval.

He will also recommend that CoMin and Treasury consider which major projects across government need to be managed on an inter-departmental basis and what steps need to be taken to develop the approach to outsourcing.