§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the cost of a blood test and of an X-ray for the purpose of age determination, respectively, and whether cost is the only reason for carrying out the one procedure and not the other.
§ The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Lord Carrington)The cost of an X-ray examination for the purpose of age determination is about £4 in Bangladesh and £7 in Pakistan. Conventional blood grouping tests have no place in age determination. Blood grouping tests can however be used in cases of alleged consanguinity to disprove but never to prove blood relationship. The costs of such tests for a child and both parents, assuming they can be tested together, is about £10 in Bangladesh and £5 in Pakistan. The relative costs of the two types of examinations are not relevant factors in deciding whether either type of test might be appropriate in a particular case.