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Mr. Letwin: I think that hon. Members will understand that the Minister cannot give a guarantee whether the far offshore trials led to a dispersion of micro-organisms over land. However, can he give some assessment as to the likelihood that that occurred? Presumably he has been reassured by officials that the likelihood is very small, but it would be interesting to know the percentages.
Dr. Reid: I cannot give a guarantee, because it was never intended that the tests would involve bacteria
reaching land. The trials were conducted far offshore, so there was no monitoring on the land. However, the bacteria used in the tests do not last very long in a polluted atmosphere.
Some less concentrated or minute traces of bacteria may have reached land, so it is impossible for me to guarantee that no bacteria landed anywhere. However, the second series of tests was conducted so far from shore that it is extremely unlikely--that was the assumption at the time--that the bacteria would have caused land-based infection. When I describe the bacteria that were used in the third test, I think that the hon. Gentleman will be even more reassured. That point was at the heart of the contribution by the hon. Member for Teignbridge.
The third group of trials generated the most public interest, because it was intended that the bacteria would be carried on to the mainland by on-shore winds, and they may have travelled over populated areas with houses, places of work and other buildings. The hon. Gentleman asked for some clarification as to the range of the tests--was it five or 10 miles inland? I think--I speak from memory and not from notes--that the range was 40 or 50 miles inland.
There were good reasons for choosing Lyme bay as the trial site. Its geography meant that the trials could proceed in a variety of wind conditions. Its location was also convenient to the naval base at Portland and to Porton Down, which helped with setting up the trials and collecting the results.
For those trials that involved the release of micro-organisms in Lyme bay, bacteria levels were monitored over the mainland. In those trials, the Microbiological Research Establishment used a specially adapted experimental trials vessel, Icewhale, which was equipped to spray material from the rear of the vessel into the onshore wind. The exact course that the ship sailed, and the position of the land-based sampling sites on each trial, were determined by several factors, including weather conditions. The samples collected from the detectors behind the ship and from the land-based sampling stations were taken for scientific analysis in the laboratory.
I must reassure hon. Members that the scientists did not use real biological agents in those experiments, but four species of bacteria that would mimic the behaviour of real agents. Two of the bacteria, bacterium aerogenes and serratia marcescens, were killed before use. They were dead bacteria, and as such they would have been incapable of growing and of producing disease. Those species were used in only a limited number of trials.
Hon. Members may ask: if the bacteria were dead, why were they used? I remind them that one purpose of the tests was to see, among other things, how biological agents would be carried by weather conditions. Another purpose was to measure how long live bacteria would last in the atmosphere. Although the bacteria used were dead, they were still traced. They were covered with a translucent coat--I think it was purple--that allowed the bacteria, though dead, to be detected as they came ashore.
The other two species of bacteria that were used in the majority of the trials occur naturally in the environment, and most people are exposed to them many times during their lifetimes. The first organism, B. globigii--which, thankfully, is commonly referred to as BG--occurs widely in soil, dust, hay and water, and is naturally
present in large amounts during the autumn. It would be inhaled simply by walking in the countryside, and material disturbed during harvesting is likely to be released in high concentrations.
Hon. Members will be pleased to know that I asked what would happen if the organism were found in larger quantities and higher concentrations than normal. I was assured that there is no evidence that it would cause any particular ailment, and certainly no long-term damage.
The second micro-organism, E. coli strain MRE 162, causes concern because of its generic name. It is one of the many different strains of the E. coli species, in which I take a particular interest, given my constituency background and last year's tragic incidents. Many of the E. coli species are part of the normal flora of the intestines of man and animals. They are part of the background atmospheric rumble, both outside and inside human beings and animals.
Unlike some strains of the organism, MRE 162 does not produce harmful toxins. I stress that it is quite different from the strain that caused recent food poisoning epidemics in Scotland. Each batch was tested before use at the time, and its safety was reaffirmed recently by independent tests at the Central Public Health Laboratory using the most up-to-date technology. In this case--which I presume is the most worrying for hon. Members--we are relying not purely on 30-year-old assertions, but upon recent evidence as well.
Several hon. Members asked whether the trials were useful. I have been advised that they were extremely useful, providing a considerable amount of important information about the progress and survival of micro-organisms released close to the United Kingdom, as might happen in a biological attack.
For example, scientists were able to calculate the concentration of surviving organisms at different times and different distances from their source of release, and how that related to their size and meteorological conditions. In light of my description, hon. Members may assert that some results may contain information that we would not wish to disperse to anyone who might seek it. I shall return to that point.
Information gathered from these trials proved invaluable for assessing what measures would be needed to protect Britain and its people from a biological attack. The results obtained also contributed to the development of computer models that were used as late as the Gulf war to help plan to protect the UK armed forces should Saddam Hussein have used his biological weapons.
Hon. Members will know--they will need no reminding, since they read newspapers and watch television, and heard my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who answered a private notice question in the Chamber on Monday--that this is, of course, still a very live issue. Indeed, it is at the centre of some of the tensions that have arisen recently in the Gulf. When I refer to the release of information, I hope that it will be accepted that it is not merely convention, paranoia or natural secrecy that causes me not to give absolute assurances on these matters, although I will try to be as helpful as I can.
One of the contentious questions that cause concern today--not least to the hon. Member for Teignbridge--is, of course, whether the general public should have been told about the trials before they took place. Several
hon. Members raised that point. At the time, almost certainly for reasons of national security, the trials to simulate the impact of a biological attack on the United Kingdom were kept secret, although information subsequently became available in the form of reports placed in the Public Record Office at Kew.
As I have said before, it is important to remember that, at the time of the trials--more than 30 years ago--before the general thaw that we seem almost to take for granted today, there was a general disposition to keep defence matters very much under wraps. It goes without saying that biological warfare was a particularly secretive area. Certainly MRE would not have wanted to release any information that might have helped a potential aggressor, any more than I would wish to do so today.
Some of the detailed data remain sensitive. There is a fine balance to be struck between helping those with aggressive intentions and, on the other hand, informing people with a legitimate interest in what is going on.
I have given reasons why the trials were kept secret, although I accept that, if we were considering such trials today, they would not take place without some publicity--however constrained--and with greater information than would have been expected and was the convention some 30 years ago. Nevertheless, the existence of the trials has been in the public domain for many years, and in the past year in particular much more information has been placed in the Public Record Office.
The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency also held, as several hon. Members mentioned, a series of informative exhibitions during September 1997. Those exhibitions, in Dorchester, Weymouth and Bridport, were aimed specifically at explaining the background and facts surrounding the biological defence trials in the Dorset area, and gave many people the opportunity to talk to scientists and to find out exactly what took place.
The hon. Gentleman's other main--and entirely legitimate--concern was whether the trials presented any hazard to the health of the people living in his area, and in the areas of other hon. Members.
Let me be quite clear about this. The scientists who carried out the trials concluded at the time that they in no way posed a threat to human life. A current evaluation of the work has reaffirmed that conclusion. I referred to some of that work earlier as regards bacteria. None of the experiments would have been carried out if there had been any doubt about the effects on public safety. They were designed with the sole and exclusive purpose of ensuring public safety, and no harmful reactions were reported at the time.
Nevertheless, I do know of the anxieties, and that a number of concerns have been voiced since the existence of these experiments came to light. In particular, as the hon. Member for Teignbridge, and others, mentioned, a number of people have suffered, or some within their family group have suffered, serious and largely unexplained illness, and they believe that the trials may have had something to do with their specific medical problems.
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