Porton Down (Hansard, 26 January 1998)

§ Mr. Spellar

These are matters for the Chief Executive of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). I have asked the Chief Executive to write to the hon. Member.

Letter from John Chisholm to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 26 January 1998: As Chief Executive of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) I have been asked to reply to your question about the progress of project licence applications for animal procedures at Porton Down submitted to the Home Office in each year since 1990. DERA's Chemical and Biological Defence Sector (CBD) at Porton Down has had a formal, internal, ethical review process for all project licence applications since March 1995. Prior to that date the review process was conducted on a much less formal basis which was not documented. I can, therefore, only provide you with accurate details of the progress of licence applications, prior to submission to the Home Office, since 1995. Each project licence application is submitted to an internal, peer group, ethical review meeting which is open to all members of staff. After hearing the licence application details the staff discuss both scientific and ethical issues. The review can result in an application being held over subject to revisions being made, approved without further amendment for submission to the Home Office or it is possible that a licence application could be completely rejected. Since the internal ethical process was formalised in 1995, no applications have been totally rejected prior to submission to the Home Office, but all have been amended to a greater or lesser extent. The table below shows the number of project licence applications submitted to the Home Office since March 1995.

Year	Number of applications
1995	6
1996	11
1997	13

I hope this is helpful.