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8.21 pm
Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay): I strongly support the Government's intention to look into how scientific material is garnered by the state for the better information of Government policies. I believe that there is far too much reliance on Government-funded research and scientific bodies at the moment. They all have a vested interest in keeping Government funds--they are very large--flowing their way. Last year, more than £14 billion was spent on such research--a massive amount of public money. The Government are therefore right to evaluate the work of these institutions from the point of view of value for money.
I declare a minor vested interest, in as much as I have worked in science all my working life--as a teacher and researcher, and afterwards developing scientific products which I marketed around the world. In the course of my long working life I have come into contact with a great many people and institutions involved in producing scientific advice and offering scientific opinions.
Dr. Lynne Jones:
Does the hon. Lady accept the contention in the 1995 document "Forward Look"--that research is a long-term investment? How does she think these proposals will ensure stable investment in basic research; and does she think that the public will be reassured by advice or statements from Ministers, knowing that that advice has come from the private sector, with its vested interests?
Mrs. Gorman:
I agree with the hon. Lady to this extent: it is essential to do our best to find independent sources of research. Where I quarrel with her is over her belief that it is likely to come from Government-funded institutions. They are not independent, since they rely on Government grants and support for the work that they do. We need evidence that is not tainted by political expediency on the one hand or by the interests of commercial ventures which may rely on the research in question on the other. A great deal of excellent research, however, comes out of the pharmaceutical industry in the shape of the development of new products.
Moreover, when evidence or advice emerges from the private sector, that sector is held responsible for the advice if it goes wrong. The development of thalidomide is a case in point. The organisation concerned is still being held responsible for the problems that that product caused. By contrast, the Government fund, endorse and then often insist on the use of pesticides. The fact that the Government have given these substances such strong backing often rules out any independent judgment by
Ministers when they have to decide whether certain pesticides may give rise to serious side effects. There is even one theory suggesting that pesticides may be involved in the BSE problem.
Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen):
With respect, I do not think that the hon. Lady has answered the question about where this independent advice is to come from.
Mrs. Gorman:
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my arguments I will get to the answer.
I do not question the need for the Government to act in loco parentis on behalf of the public when it comes to matters of public health and requiring advice on them. The question concerns where that advice should come from. I do not think we should rely exclusively on quasi-Government organisations such as the public health laboratory service, ADAS and the myriad other such institutions for that advice.
The scientists working in such institutions are just the same as people in other organisations, commercial or Government-run. They are sometimes wrong; they are sometimes influenced by the need to keep their grants flowing, particularly when their grants are running out. I know of several examples of institutions rushing to publish evidence when a longer period of cogitation about their hypotheses might have been advisable--
Mr. Garrett:
HRT, for instance.
Mrs. Gorman:
Hormone replacement therapy is a treatment which has been evaluated and in use since the 1940s. It has remarkable effects, of which I am but one example.
We tend to respond too hastily to what are thought to be emergencies. There is a distinction between genuine emergencies such as plane crashes or disasters at sea and scares generated by hypotheses that are published by groups of scientists who may be shroud waving so as to ensure that their grants come through again. Their intention is not to scare the public but to maintain their own positions by putting evidence in the public domain before it has been evaluated by their peer groups--an essential component of scientific progress.
I believe, for example, that the salmonella scare--I have written the world's most authoritative book on it, called "Chickengate"--was partly caused by pressure from the PHLS laboratory near Bristol to keep its premises going. There had been a suggestion that a number of laboratories were to be closed down, and it was from that very laboratory that the salmonella scare emanated. Its diagnosis linked the infection to eggs, which was bogus science. I have done a great deal of research on eggs and infections in eggs, and I can tell the House that they are hermetically sealed by nature specifically to keep bugs out. What is more, bugs that do get in cannot, in that environment, reproduce enough to make anyone ill.
The salmonella scare was nothing to do with farmyards; it was to do with kitchen hygiene. The people using the materials were not using them in clean vessels or in a clean environment. I shall not go into the background of that situation, but the Government rushed to do something as a result of evidence that eventually proved to be faulty. The Government eventually ditched the regulations that brought about the slaughter of almost 4 million chickens,
approximately 10,000 small egg production businesses going down the pan and goodness knows how many hundreds of millions of eggs being smashed in an orgy of public recrimination against the industry. The problem originated as a result of poor hygiene conditions in places that produce food, such as sandwich bars and hospital kitchens.
That is just one example of a scare that was exacerbated, if not generated entirely, by a report from a Government health organisation. I urge the Government to bear in mind that scientists, just like the rest of humanity, are interested in their own survival--and sometimes that survival prompts them to do things that they might not do in other circumstances or if their lifeblood did not depend on it. There are mad scientists as well as mad cows. I urge the Government to keep an eye on the people who put out this research.
I draw the attention of hon. Members to the organisation that deals with our environment--the IPCC--another Government-funded organisation. The organisation has not so much dreamed up, but it has given weight to and endorsed, the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is one of these scares that has generated all sorts of Government regulations--affecting the motor industry, for example. We have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and we have to look at the way in which we dispose of scientific and industrial materials. That scare has led to the IPCC's interference in other industries, quite separately from the original idea of keeping an eye on what was happening with our climate.
Mr. Dafis:
The hon. Lady needs to bear in mind that the IPCC's findings were verified through a rigorous process of peer review involving scientists from around the world. It is not as though one Government are funding one Government institute and producing inaccurate results--there has been exhaustive research over a long period.
Mrs. Gorman:
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that much of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's research and observations on the environment and on environmental changes contradicts a lot of the research of the IPCC. In fact, to have an institution called the International Panel for Climate Control is ludicrous--the idea that human beings, with our puny efforts, can control the climate is ludicrous.
Mr. Dafis:
It is called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Mrs. Gorman:
It does not matter whether it is "change" or "control"--the institution has a vested interest in promulgating the idea that we, through our industrial processes, are causing terrible changes in our climate. NASA, another source of information in this regard, has made observations from outside our planet and it refutes that argument. I am inclined to take a balanced view. We should not impose regulations on industries--for example, the car industry in relation to carbon dioxide emissions--that may damage people's livelihoods rather than their health. We should not rush to judgment on the basis of research from institutions of that sort.
I am calling for a much wider level of consultation when the Government have some kind of problem that the public may be concerned about. We have to remember
that a lot of these so-called problems are not generated by the public, or by people within the Ministry, but by many of these institutions. My point is that there is no independent evaluation of these institutions at the moment.
I agree with Government funding of basic science, which includes some of the work carried out at Greenwich and Kew. Such work is valuable and useful, and it is difficult to say where they would get their money if not from the Government. However, I believe that that money could be better spent elsewhere. There is a difference between basic science and science that is based on what are considered to be rather immediate problems, and that is mostly what these Government scientific institutions are involved in.
I believe that the mere fact that these organisations are Government-funded and endorsed gives them a degree of status and credibility that they may not deserve, but which people tend not to question. They are seen to produce Government information and therefore they have a degree of credibility that they may not deserve. The Government should use a number of research organisations--independent organisations that may be generated by groups of scientists currently working in state-funded institutions.
When the Government are presented with a problem--such as cows dying from a disease which at present appears to have no clear origin--they should put out to contract, perhaps with more than one institute, the need to investigate it. The Government would then receive different advice--a number of hypotheses. BSE is in this situation at the moment. We have accepted the views of a group of people, the Edinburgh group, who have come up with a particular hypothesis that there could be a link--and we have instituted draconian measures as a result.
I believe that an article in the Daily Telegraph this week will challenge the whole thesis that the foodstuffs that cows were eating are responsible for BSE. There are theories that BSE could be caused and transmitted by mites--many diseases are transmitted by insects or small crustacea. An example is malaria--no one has tested that route of investigation yet, but there is scientific evidence.
As there is very little independent review, scientific evidence that is lying around in the archives could be introduced into the debate, but it is often ignored. Again, I refer to the BSE scare. Dr. Clive Bruton, who is working in my constituency, is one of the curators of the department of neuropathology's brain bank. Apparently, some little while ago, he published a paper--he did not make assertions that this was the last word--on Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. He pointed out that there was plenty of old evidence about this so-called new strain of CJD, which is believed to be the problem. It is believed that this new strain is causing the problem in younger people. We all know that CJD has been around for a long time. It is a rare disease and the number of people in this country dying from it is reducing--I think there were 50 cases last year and 49 the year before.
There is no impetus in an institution that has come up with an hypothesis to spend an adequate amount of time to research the views of its peers by looking through the literature. This is how scientists work: they examine publications from a variety of institutions to test their
hypotheses. Scientists who come up with an idea are under psychological pressure to prove their point and to make their hypotheses stand up. That is what has happened with the Edinburgh group.
I am making the case for a longer period of investigation, particularly when the Government are responding with a knee-jerk reaction because of a scare that is being generated from a single quasi-governmental institution that is dependent on Government funding and support. If we did a little research, we might find a link between the scares and the proximity of the next round of grant allocations. Like everyone else, scientists wish it to appear that their services are vital and are essential to the maintenance of the Government's programmes.
Therefore, I urge the Government not to rely on a single, Government-funded source, but to look instead at stimulating independent institutions that may arise out of the state organisations--as has occurred with other privatisations. The Government could commission them to investigate the problems with which they are presented.
Such institutions may have a data bank to which they could refer to discover the views of other experts in the field. The Government could then refer to those views before reacting. When the Government react against a body of relatively untested evidence, they create the kind of hysteria that surrounded the salmonella crisis and that we are seeing again in the BSE crisis. That has huge knock-on costs in other industries--in this case, the£4 billion beef industry. The Government must now deal with the problems that their response has created in relation to rendering plants, for example. That is an on-going dilemma: one problem generates another. It is a very disruptive process and not how science should assist Government or the community.
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