§ Mr. MorleyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 18 January,Official Report, column 528, if he will explain the delay in the publication of Statistics of "Scientific Procedures Performed on Living Animals","Great Britain", 1993; and what measures he is taking to ensure that it does not recur.
§ Mr. Nicholas BakerThe delay in the publication of the annual Command Paper was caused by problems with the computer systems upon which the collection of data for this publication is dependent, and by a need to investigate possible omissions in the data. With these statistics, completeness is more important than timeliness. I am pleased to say that the problems have been resolved satisfactorily. Arrangements for handling the annual returns issued to persons licenses to perform scientific procedures have been modified to ensure more timely publication in future years.