§ Mr. Stephen Rossasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the result of the autopsy carried out on the dead whales washed ashore on the South Coast last week.
§ Mr. Buchanan-SmithMy Department has not performed autopsies on the dead
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§ Sir George YoungFigures of the children being looked after in these three categories of homes in each of the local authority districts of Greater Manchester are not available. The figures available for children in the care of each of the local authority districts of Greater Manchester at 31 March 1978 and for the previous three years are as follows. Figures for the years before 1975 are not comparable because of local authority boundary changes.
whales. However, the results of analytical tests carried out on samples of body tissue from the first three dead whales show that the concentrations of arsenic and of a number of other possible contaminants which might have contributed to the deaths of the whales were within the normal range found in fish around the United Kingdom coast. It is thought that death was most likely due to natural causes or fishing activities.