Blair Adviser Claims GM Study 'Fixed'

ANTONY BARNETT & MARK TOWNSEND / The Guardian (UK) 17apr03

A scientific adviser to Tony Blair has launched a damaging attack on the Prime Minister's attempts to persuade the public to accept genetically modified crops.

Sir Tom Blundell, professor of biochemistry at Cambridge university and a Labour supporter, who was appointed by Mr Blair to chair the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 1998, has effectively accused ministers of a fix.

In a leaked letter Prof Blundell condemns government efforts to have an independent scientific review of GM technology as "artificial". He warns that this will be completed before a public debate has even begun. His comments will encourage critics who claim that the Government has already made up its mind to sanction the commercial growing of GM crops. As a result of growing public disquiet, ministers agreed last summer to launch a public debate as well as an independent scientific and economic review of the technology. Mr Blair promised that a decision would await the results of these reviews.

In a strongly worded letter to Professor David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser who is heading the scientific review, Prof Blundell casts doubt on the process.

"The national public debate is only just about to start and will hold its conferences, debates and meetings around the country between May and July and is not due to report until the autumn," Prof Blundell wrote in the letter dated March 19 and copied to Downing Street's Strategy Unit.

"It seems impossible that the values articulated in that process could inform the science review or the Strategy Unit's economic study which are still due to publish their results in May and June."

The Royal Commission sees "a real danger that their conclusion will already have been cast, or at least the public would be justified in perceiving that to be the case".

Prof Blundell concludes: "Without a clearer mechanism and better prospects for a fully integrated process, this opportunity will be wasted and an artificial result will be all that is achieved."

His concern is given weight by the fact that completion of the farm trials - designed to discover the effect of GM crops on the environment - has been delayed, and the results will therefore be excluded from the debate.