---

Public Accounts

To be honest, I do not recall—we have 60 sessions a year; other members of the Committee are here—but at a guess, none, despite the staggering failure in project management. A project that was supposed to save some £50 million actually wasted £80 million. I think we were told, as we always are, that we are not entitled to pursue civil servants by name, and I do not think it right that we should. My father was a civil servant and I have a great sense of the ethos of senior civil servants. It is not for us physically to pursue, persecute and crucify them, but I do think that it is for the civil service itself to take to task people who are responsible for such a catastrophic failure.