§ Mr. Couchmanasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he has any progress to report following his reply to the hon. Member for Scarborough (Sir M. Shaw) on 27 October 1982 about the establishment of the Health Promotion Research Trust.
§ Mr. John PattenI am glad to be able to inform the House that on behalf of United Kingdom Health Ministers I have agreed with the Tobacco Advisory Council that the trustees of the Health Promotion Research Trust will be:
- Sir John Butterfield—Chairman
- Mr. G. W. Redgate—Vice Chairman
- Professor Eva Alberman
- Baroness Birk
509 - Miss Angela Buxton
- Miss Eileen Cole
- Mr. R. E. Edwards
- Mr. Ian McCallum
- Dr. Johnathan Miller
- Sir Hector Monro, MP
I welcome the fact that the people who have agreed to serve as trustees are distinguished in their various fields and have been selected from all walks of life, with a strong emphasis on the well being of young people.
The secretary to the trust will be Mr. R. S. King. In its operation the trust will be completely independent of both the Government and of the Tobacco Advisory Council. It will be empowered to commission research up to a total cost of £11 million over the next four years.
As soon as the trust has been formally established, a further announcement will be made by the trustees. In the meantime, I am glad to tell the House that the preparatory work of the trust is already under way and that the trustees have received over 100 research proposals for consideration and have begun to establish a panel of independent scientific referees to assist them.
I and my colleagues are grateful to the Tobacco Advisory Council and to Sir John Butterfield and his colleagues for their co-operation in facilitating this important and valuable new source of finance for the health research community.
The Tobacco Advisory Council is already providing the independent scientific committee on smoking and health with trust funds to the extent of £3 million for the purposes of research into the effects on the health of smokers of product modification undertaken by the tobacco industry, and the companies represented by the council are continuing to invest heavily in their own long-term programmes of research into smoking and tobacco products.
This new trust, while excluding research designed to examine the use and effects of tobacco products will enable a broad programme of research into health promotion to be mounted. In commissioning the programme, the trustees will not be prevented from sponsoring projects which also incorporate information on the smoking habit, where this information may be necessary to achieve the purposes of the research programme.