A Ministry of Justice Spokesman said:

"The Ministry of Justice can confirm that for HMP Wolds, G4S's score met the non-price threshold and, had the competition for HMP Wolds continued, G4S would have been invited to participate at the second stage of the process. However, the competition was ended for the reasons set out in the written ministerial statement of 8 November 2012, being that the benefits of the competition, when compared to the option of clustering the Wolds with the nearby prison HMP Everthorpe, did not represent best value to the public.

“The Secretary of State specifically referred to G4S in his speech on 21 November at the Centre for Social Justice when he said that 'we didn't take back the Wolds prison from G4S because of what happened at the Olympics.  We did so because having looked at their bid, it made more sense to merge it with a group of neighbouring public prisons, with shared facilities, shared leadership and so reduce costs quickly.'"