§ Mr. Viantasked the Minister of Health, as representing the Lord President of the Council, whether he will publish as a Command Paper the Report of a Committee of the Medical Research Council which appeared in the British Medical Journal for 15th December. 1956, in view of the fact that that issue of the British Medical Journal is now out of print; and what principle governs the place of publication of Reports of Government Committees for which he is responsible, who get the cost of their investigations out of public funds and whose Reports may he needed for many years.
§ Mr. Walker-SmithNo. It is assumed that the report referred to is that on Poliomyelitis and Prophylactic Inoculation prepared by the Medical Research Council's Committee on Inoculation Procedures and Neurological Lesions and published in theLancet on 15th December, 1956. My noble Friend understands that a limited number of copies of the particular issue of this journal are still available for sale; it is, of course, also freely available in most scientific reference libraries.
It has always been the Medical Research Council's policy that the detailed results of research under its auspices should 170W normally be published by the investigators themselves—either as individuals, research teams or committees—as papers in the scientific journals. The Council itself issues, through Her Majesty's Stationery Office, a series of Special Reports giving the results of more extensive investigations. It also issues another series of Memoranda, describing the results of certain ad hoc inquiries made with the Council's support or giving concise summaries of the existing state of knowledge of particular subjects. The Annual Report of the Medical Research Council, and on occasion certain special reports, are issued as Command Papers.