Q91 Mr Khan: Did you take legal advice when you terminated his employment?
Mr Nettel: Yes, we did.
Q92 Mr Khan: When you do your note for us, could you include the advice at all stages that your experts used when you do your breakdown of costs?5 Could we also have a breakdown of the £14.9 million, the wasted costs? That does not seem to be in the Report. I may have missed it.
Mr Nettel: It is available. Yes; absolutely.
Q93 Mr Khan: May I take you to appendix two? Appendix two sets out some of the external reviews of the Campus scheme. Mr Taylor at what stage do you think that this project should have been stopped?
Mr Taylor: There is a case for arguing that it should not have gone ahead at the OBC stage.
Q94 Mr Khan: Good. In May 2000 the OBC raises a number of concerns; one of them is the affordability of the scheme as well as the other concerns. You said that things have now changed and any scheme above £75 million has to be approved centrally. So presumably this scheme would nowadays have been stopped.
Mr Taylor: It would not have been allowed to go forward without the qualifications being satisfactorily resolved.
Q95 Mr Khan: But notwithstanding that, even looking at this, you think there is a case for saying in late 2000 this should have been stopped.
Mr Taylor: There is a case for saying that, yes.
Q96 Mr Khan: How many employees have been disciplined for not taking steps to stop this?
Mr Taylor: None that I am aware of.
Q97 Mr Khan: No employee has been disciplined because of this.
Mr Taylor: Not that I am aware of.
Q98 Mr Khan: You accept that as early as late 2000 there were good grounds for stopping the scheme.
Mr Taylor: What I said was that there was a case to be answered and I also think that if it came forward now, it probably would certainly not go forward in the way that it went forward. It has to be said that at the time the scheme was operating under delegation to the regional office.
Q99 Mr Khan: I am not blaming you; I am not saying that you should have stopped it. You are saying there was a case for it to have been stopped in May 2000. Do you think there was a stronger case for it being stopped in 2003?
Mr Taylor: I agree with what the NAO Report says which was that in 2003, what should have happened was that either the scheme should have been stopped or at that stage a revised OBC should have been called for.
Q100 Mr Khan: In your current role what steps have you taken to see whether any employees currently in post are to blame for it not being stopped at that stage? In other words, if no disciplinary action was taken for the decision not to stop it in late 2000, there could be an argument for there being stronger calls for disciplinary action in 2003.
Mr Taylor: I doubt whether-
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