Although they gave a polite response, saying that the proposal by Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, would be studied, the word in Whitehall was that it would not happen.

Since our scenario called for a form-based application (Microsoft Word) to take part in a request/response handshake, the communication between the initiator and the provider needed to be synchronous.

If a nil was returned, the word was not found, so you provide a default response.