When the details of this supposedly confidential agreement were leaked to the press, Caledonian, which had expressed its interest in acquiring BUA itself and had already begun negotiations with BUA's senior management to make an offer to take over the airline, immediately applied to the ATLB for the revocation of all of BUA's scheduled route licences, requesting them to be transferred to itself. It also leaked its own version of this story to "The Observer". Following this revelation, Roy Mason made a statement to the House of Commons that B&C had misled him about the prospects of forming a "Second Force" airline through a merger with another independent, and that he was therefore going to withhold his final approval of the BOAC-BUA merger "until the situation has been clarified". This opened the way for several parties – including Caledonian – to make a counter bid for BUA. As well as BOAC and Caledonian, Laker Airways and a consortium led by Alan Bristow expressed interest by the end of April. Bidders were required to withdraw any application for BUA routes and undertake not to make any such application for a year.