§ Mr. Matthew TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman) of 21 November 2000,Official Report, column 101W, regarding Porton Down, (a) what plans his Department has to write to hospitals and general practices in the UK to inform them of these arrangements and (b) who will analyse the data from the consultations at St. Thomas' Hospital. [146686]
§ Dr. MoonieThe Department of Health sent an electronic message about the medical assessment programme for Porton Down volunteers to directors of public health in England on 21 November 2000. This message was then forwarded to general practitioners, chief executives of health authorities, chairs of primary care groups, primary care medical advisers, project managers/nurse leads in walk-in centres and leads at nurse-led personal medical services pilots. A copy of the message was also sent to the Library of the House and is available on the Department of Health website at www.doh.gov.uk/cmo/cmo3.htm. The Health departments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have disseminated this message to OPs and health board directors of public health within their area of responsibility.
The Porton Down volunteers' medical assessment programme has only just started and it is therefore too early to consider the analysis of its data. The data about specific individuals' referral to the medical assessment programme will be medically confidential. However, it is planned to aggregate and anonymise the data to form a case series for analysis. Such data could, with volunteers' consent, be made available to independent researchers.
§ Mr. Matthew TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence if service volunteers under the age of 18 years have taken part in experiments at the chemical defence establishment, Porton Down, since 1971; and what analysis and research his Department has carried out into the ages of service volunteers who took part in experiments at the chemical defence establishment, Porton Down. [146648]
§ Dr. MoonieThe policy of the chemical and biological defence sector of DERA at Porton Down has always been to refuse any prospective participants of the service volunteer programme if they were proven to be under the age of 18. This policy has been published in Defence Council instructions dating from 1971 and in the later580W 1992 Army general and administrative instructions. Information on age limits was also included in information produced by Porton Down following the formalisation of their protocol systems in the 1980s.
No formal analysis of the experimental records relating to the service volunteer programme has been undertaken to determine the ages of volunteers who have participated in the studies. However, there are some entries in the records which indicate that volunteers were returned to their units on the basis of their age being below an 18-year-old threshold.