Q91 Mr Bacon: What is it?
Mr Ewer: It would have been somewhere around 5% of the contract value, and therefore traditionally one would set a liability cap that-
Q92 Mr Bacon: That was commensurately low. When you say "these projects", what kinds of projects are you referring to that typically have a margin of 5%, because I remember somebody sitting where you are sitting for a major construction group a few years ago saying that a typical return on the sorts of building projects that his members were involved in was 17%?
Mr Ewer: That is in my experience absolutely not the case.
Q93 Mr Bacon: The return has come down recently, has it?
Mr Ewer: The norm would be somewhere between 2% at the low end at bidding and up to 10% at the high end.
Q94 Mr Bacon: As low as that?
Mr Ewer: ffies.
Q95 Mr Bacon: For taking for quite a big risk. Sir Brian, would you like to comment about the liability cap?
Mr Dawes: Certainly at the time it appeared to be quite a high cap as far as we could see but this was clearly disciplined within the contractual mechanism, which gave us comfort that there would be delivery of the project, so I think we were reasonably comfortable with that capping arrangement.
Q96 Mr Bacon: May I ask about paragraph 2.16 where it says: "The Department considers that JLC Ltd subsequently modified its design." I thought that was a well-phrased NAO sentence that suggested perhaps that JLC did not consider that it had carefully modified its design. What is your opinion of that sentence?
Mr Ewer: I could not confirm that we had modified our design.
Q97 Mr Bacon: You could not confirm that you had modified your design?
Mr Ewer: No, but I cannot categorically say that there were not some changes to the design either. It is not in my knowledge and unfortunately because-
Q98 Mr Bacon: Who is in charge of the design because it clearly was not the Department because they were standing there a tennis court's distance away trying to help but not get too involved? It was somebody on your side, was it not?
Mr Ewer: On our side, we were in charge of the design. We had responsibility.
Q99 Mr Bacon: Who?
Mr Ewer: The project management team. Unfortunately, we sold that business and none of them exist in our business today, and I do not have access to the design records.
Q100 Mr Bacon: Mr Briggs, you are the Mr Moneybags in all of this, are you not? Why did you not step in? A PFI theologian would turn around at this point and say, "Well, of course a PFI cannot go wrong because it is all in the contract and if it all goes horribly wrong eventually the consortium owners, the banks will step in and sort it out." Well, why did not you not step in and replace Laser?
Mr Briggs: For the simple reason that by stepping into the shoes of Laser in the contract the banks would have effectively assumed full responsibility for the design. The banks would-