HL Deb 07 February 1994 vol 551 cc115-6WA
Lord Kennet

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will list the membership of the Ethics Committee dealing with experiments and involving humans at the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down.

Viscount Cranborne

This is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment and I have asked him to reply to the noble Lord.

Letter to Lord Kennet from the Director General of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, Dr. Graham Pearson, dated 7 February 1994.

1. Your Parliamentary Question to Her Majesty's Government of 24 January 1994 asking whether they will list the membership of the Ethics Committee dealing with experiments involving humans at the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down of 24 January 1994 has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the UK Armed Forces have effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. In order to carry out this work, it is necessary to use volunteers to:

  1. (a) assess the ability of Service personnel to function with new equipment and procedures,
  2. (b) develop medical countermeasures to protect Service personnel, and
  3. (c) evaluate the effects of very low and medically safe concentrations of CW agents on the ability of unprotected personnel to operate normally.

No studies involving volunteers are carried out unless there is a clear military need and a detailed protocol has been reviewed and approved by an independent Ethics Committee in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Royal College of Physicians. The volunteers come from all three Services and from both sexes.

3. The Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment Ethics Committee was established in July 1991. This Committee follows the guidelines laid down by the Royal College of Physicians of London and its membership includes lay members, members of both sexes from the local community, a nurse and a general medical practitioner.

4. The Ethics Committee has subsumed previous arrangements for the ethical review of proposed volunteer studies. For some 30 years, a committee on the safety of human experiments had been set up at this establishment involving all the medical officers on the staff of the establishment whose task was to review all the protocols for proposed volunteer studies to ensure that they were as safe as possible; this committee had the right of veto. Following such reviews, protocols were then considered by an ethical sub-group of the Medical Committee of the Defence Scientific Advisory Committee, which involved independent experts.

5. The individual independent members of this committee serve in a personal capacity and it would be inappropriate for the Ministry of Defence to name them.