Mr. William Beausang:

It might be useful now to outline the different steps that we have gone through to get to the point that we are at currently. The Deputy was briefed by the CEO of the HEA at the committee's May meeting in private session on where things stood. Subsequent to that briefing we met with the HEA, the CEO and his team, to discuss the draft review and the legal advice that they had got on the submissions that they had received, of the CEO that Dr. Love had outlined. We responded to the CEO with our view of that legal assessment, back in June. The meeting was on 5 June and we met with the CEO and his team on 11 June. This was not a legal response but one from the officials in the Department to the legal advice that the HEA advised the committee of at their May private session. That letter was considered by a subcommittee of the board of the HEA and culminated in the HEA requesting senior counsel's advice.

The senior counsel's advice is a much broader piece of work relating, as Dr. Love has already said, to the powers that the HEA has to carry out reviews and investigations. It was a very significant and substantive legal analysis that arrived in to us at the end of July, if I am correct. Subsequent to that, we worked through with our own in-house legal adviser, a seconded official of the Office of the Attorney General, in order to develop our understanding and to formulate a question. A scenario in which the HEA's legal advice is wide-ranging-----