volume 17, number 10, july 2003 - foundation for science … · · 2013-12-11fst journal fst...

THE FOUNDATIONFOR SCIENCE ANDTECHNOLOGYfst

Chemical and biological threatsSir William Stewart: Nature, our worst enemy

Dr Pat Troop: Public health and protection

David Veness: Anticipating threats

Internet in businessAndrew Pinder: The Government record

John Leggate: Business strategies

Frances Cairncross: Driving social change

Foot and mouthSir Brian Follett: Formulating the future

Sir Ben Gill: Empowering farmers

Elliot Morley: Updating contingencies

Innovative engineeringProfessor John Burland

The Journal of the Foundation forScience and Technology(formerly Technology Innovation and Society)

Volume 17, Number 10, July 2003

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VICE PRESIDENTSThe Earl of ShannonThe Lord Flowers FRSDr Richard J Haas CBE LLD Hon ScDThe Earl of Selborne KBE FRSSir Brian Jenkins GBEViscount Runciman of Doxford CBE PBA

COUNCILCHAIRMANThe Rt Hon the Lord Jenkin of Roding

The President of the Royal Society The Lord May of Oxford OM AC PRS FMedSciThe President, The Royal Academy of Engineering Sir Alec Broers FRS FREngThe President, The Academy of Medical Sciences Sir Keith Peters FRS PMedSciThe President, The Science Council Sir Gareth Roberts FRSChairman, The Arts and Humanities Research Board Professor Sir Brian Follett FRSChairman, The Engineering and Technology Board Sir Peter Williams CBE FREng FRSChairman, The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Dr Peter RingroseChairman, The Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils Professor Sir Graeme Davies FRSE FREngChairman, The Economic and Social Research Council Ms Frances CairncrossChairman, The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Professor Julia Higgins DBE FRS FREngChairman, The Medical Research Council Sir Anthony CleaverChairman, The Natural Environment Research Council Mr Rob Margetts CBE FREngChairman, The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council Mr Peter Warry

Dr Robert Hawley CBE DSc FRSE FREng (Deputy Chairman)Mr Patrick McHugh (Honorary Secretary) Mr Tony Quigley (Honorary Treasurer)

Professor Polina Bayvel FREngThe Lord Browne of Madingley FREngSir Geoffrey Chipperfield KCBProfessor Michael Dexter, FRS FMedSciThe Lord HaskelDr Geraldine Kenney-Wallace FRSCSir John Krebs FRSSir Hugh LaddieThe Lord Oxburgh KBE FRSDr Michael SandersonThe Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior FMedSciProfessor Sir William Stewart FRS FRSEThe Lord Sutherland of Houndwood KT FBA PRSEProfessor Mark Walport FMedSciThe Baroness Wilcox

DIRECTORDr Dougal Goodman

Neither the Foundation nor the Editor is responsible for the opinions of contributors to FST JOURNAL.© 2003 The Foundation for Science and Technology. ISSN 1475-1704


fstjournal

FST JOURNAL >> JULY 2003 >> VOL. 17 (10)

THE COUNCIL OF THE FOUNDATION . . . . . inside front cover

UPDATEThe Lord Butterworth, Wind energy, Nanotechnology,Foot and mouth disease, Fisheries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL THREATSNature: still our worst enemy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Sir William Stewart

Melding public health and protection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Dr Pat Troop

Anticipating an enduring threat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

David Veness

THE INTERNETThe internet in business and government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Andrew Pinder

Business and the internet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

John Leggate

The internet as a driver of social change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Frances Cairncross

INNOVATIVE ENGINEERINGEngineering and ivory towers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Professor John Burland

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASEExperience informs the future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Sir Brian Follett

Empowering farmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Sir Ben Gill

Updating contingency plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Elliot Morley

EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20


c o n t e n t s

THE FOUNDATIONFOR SCIENCE ANDTECHNOLOGYffsstt

Chemical and biological threatsSir William Stewart: Nature, our worst enemy

Dr Pat Troop: Public health and protection

David Veness: Anticipating threats

Internet in businessAndrew Pinder: The Government record

John Leggate: Business strategies

Frances Cairncross: Driving social change

Foot and mouth diseaseSir Brian Follett: Formulating the future

Sir Ben Gill: Empowering farmers

Elliot Morley: Updating contingencies

Innovative engineeringProfessor John Burland

The Journal of the Foundation forScience and Technology(formerly Technology Innovation and Society)


fstjournal

update

2 FST JOURNAL >> JULY 2003 >> VOL. 17 (10)

Wind energy to fill the gaps?The way that the UK government plans to meet its ambitioustarget of supplying 10 per cent of the nation’s energy needs fromrenewable energy sources was revealed with the announcement(on 14 July) of proposals for licensing three of the world’sbiggest wind farms. The wind farms will consist of 3,000 towersbetween five and 75 miles off the coast in the Thames Estuary,the Wash and in an area between Morecambe Bay and northWales. The 10 per cent target (or “aspiration”) was included thewhite paper, Our Energy Future — Creating a Low CarbonEconomy, publishedin February this year(FST Journal Vol. 17(9), p. 2).

The new proposalsfollow on from aninitial 17 fields,limited to 30 turbineseach. One is underconstruction and theremainder are in vari-ous stages of develop-ment. The first roundof licensing has beendeemed a successand, unveiling thesecond round, tradeand industry secre-tary Patricia Hewittspoke in terms ofhundreds of turbinespowering one in sixhouseholds by 2010.This would amount to an impressive 6 gigawatts of power —provided all the licences are taken up and fully developed. Forcomparison, one nuclear power plant will produce upwards of 2gigawatts of power.

Environmental groups — Greenpeace and Friends of theEarth included — have welcomed the wind power plans, as haveindustry groups including The British Wind Energy Association.But industry sources are also concerned that the still small windenergy sector may be hard pushed to meet the government’sschedule for the first phase of the plan. Companies will have justthree months to submit tenders for leases in the three oceanareas, and the government is hoping that construction of thefarms can begin in the next few years. ❐British Wind Energy Association: http://www.offshorewindfarms.co.uk/

British government plans: http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/renewables

Big money for nanotechnologyOn 2 July the UK Science and Innovation Minister LordSainsbury announced an investment of £90 million over the nextsix years to help industry to exploit the commercial opportuni-ties offered by nanotechnology.

The money is to be spent on collaborative research and a newnetwork of micro- and nanotechnology facilities. The newinvestment is also expected to ensure additional industry andregional spending of the order of £200 million and will providea boost to future advanced manufacturing in the UK.

Of the £90 million in extra funding, £50million is to go, onan Applied Research Programme that will support collaborativeresearch and development projects between industry and the sci-ence base. And £40million is for new and existing facilities thatwill make up a UKMicroNanoTechnology (MNT) Network. Thenetwork will provide access to academic and industrial facilitiesthroughout the United Kingdom.

A Strategic Advisory Group has been established to help guidethe DTI’s support of nanotechnology. It includes representativesfrom industry, universities, research councils and UK develop-ment agencies. In addition the government has commissioned astudy by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineeringto look at developments in nanotechnology to understandwhether it raises any ethical, health and safety, environmental orsocial issues which are not covered by current regulations. ❐Royal Society/ Royal Academy of Engineering study: www.royalsoc.ac.uk and www.raeng.co.uk.

US National Nanotechnology Initiative: http://www.nano.gov/

Japan and nanotechnology: http://www.nanoworld.jp/

European Union nanotechnology programmes: http://www.cordis.lu/nanotechnology/

Foot and mouth diseaseThe Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs(DEFRA) announced its Foot and Mouth Disease ContingencyPlan in March of this year. The plan was laid in accordance withSection 18 of the Animal Health Act 2002, which came into forceat the same time.

The plan sets out the operational arrangements Defra intends toput in place to deal with any occurrence of foot and mouth disease,and records the policy on which the operational arrangements arebased. As a ‘living document’, it is expected that it will be subject toongoing revision taking on the latest scientific advice, developments in policy and comments fromstakeholders and operational partners. The plan will be reviewed atleast annually to meet the provisions of the Animal Health Act. ❐www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/diseases/fmd/contingency/contingency.htm

Rough ride for Scottish fishermenA new fisheries policy for Europe came into force on 1 January2003. The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) replaced the previousregime which, in the words of The Earl of Selborne, speaking inNovember 2001 at the FST’s discussion on fisheries policy, had“failed miserably” in its 20-year term (FST Journal Vol 17 (5), p. 3).

The new policy marks an end to the principle of maintaininga rough balance between fish stocks and catch. Instead a series of“recovery plans” is intended to allow depleted fish stocks to buildup, necessitating drastic cuts in quotas and complete bans onfishing certain areas. It is hoped that the first such plan, whichaims to restore cod stocks in 5 to 10 years, can come into force inJanuary 2004.

During 2003, interim measures are in operation. Funds tosubsidise modernisation of vessels have been severely cut.Instead there is a €32 million “scrapping fund”, part of a seriesof emergency measures for scrapping fishing vessels.

Scottish fishermen have been particularly hit by the “15 daysper month” scheme, brought in because their fisheries are, saythe scientists, amongst those most risk. With such cuts beingimposed, more attention is being paid to ensure compliance,backed by “name and shame” league tables in a new“Compliance scoreboard” (see weblink below). ❐DEFRA: http://www.defra.gov.uk/fish/

European policy: http://europa.eu.int/comm/fisheries/policy_en.htm

Compliance scoreboard: http://europa.eu.int/comm/fisheries/scoreboard/index_en.htm

The Lord Butterworth The Lord Butterworth, the President and past Chairman of theFoundation, died on 19th June. Lord Butterworth, despite hisfrailty in the past year, always tried to attend Foundation meet-ings and will be sadly missed. He was well known for his devel-opment of Warwick University, during his time as ViceChancellor to become one of the highest ranked universities inthe country. At the Foundation he was known as a robust chair-man and put his stamp on the way in which the Foundationshould conduct its meetings. An obituary will appear in thenext issue. ❐

Blyth Offshore, the first offshore windfarm in the UK, with two 2-MW VestasV66 turbines. Picture:AMEC Wind.

FST JOURNAL >> JULY 2003 >> VOL. 17 (10) 3

chemical and biological threats

I begin with this reflection: the biggestbio-terrorist threat remains that fromMother Nature.Global travel brings global diseases to

unsuspecting populations, as in the cur-rent SARS outbreak. Remember thatSpanish ’flu killed more people between1918 and 1920 than were killed in theFirst World War, that AIDS continues toincrease in Britain and is rampant insouthern Africa. We also now have bacte-ria resistant to antibiotics and virusesresistant to antiviral drugs.

Last year there were 750,000 flightsinto Britain carrying 72 million passen-gers. In a sense, the 55 million people liv-ing here now risk exposure to the bugs of6.3 billion people worldwide. We are cer-tainly no longer isolated on an island, andin any case we already have a rich stock ofinfectious agents: ’‘flu, E.coli O157,Chlamydia, TB, hepatitis and dozensmore. And now, on top of that, we havebio-terrorism. That puts the new threat inperspective.

I shall touch on three questions. First,what is the perceived threat? Second, howprepared are we? Third, what of thefuture?

Bio-terrorism is low-tech terrorism.Sophisticated equipment is not requiredto generate the organisms. Indeed, bio-terrorism is not new: Hannibal used it,Alexander the Great used it, so did theMongols.

My personal experience of anthrax isrelevant. In the early 1940s, an island offthe West Coast of Scotland was used intests of the effect of anthrax on animals.The exercise was provoked by evidencethat Germany and Japan were consideringits use, so a plane dropped a bomb ladenwith anthrax spores on an island off thecoast inhabited only by sheep.Unfortunately, they forgot that the peatalong the West Coast of Scotland was sev-eral metres deep, so that the sheep werespared and the anthrax spores lived most-ly at depth below the surface. So they car-ried out further tests using spores releasedfrom a gantry and carried downwind.

More than 40 years later, it was decid-ed to decontaminate the site. I chaired theadvisory committee overseeing the job.The technology then was simple: therewas a stretcher to carry materials up fromthe boat to the site and to transfer any-body who died back down again. Thevegetation was burnt off and the contam-inated area treated with 1 per centformaldehyde in seawater. Then 40 sheep

were put back on the island to graze forseveral months. I used to give a talk enti-tle, “We counted them on and we countedthem off”, but a few weeks later one ofthem died of something that it had pickedup on the mainland.

Even for that operation, we needed arobust multidisciplinary team. There werea bacteriologist, a clinician, a soil scientist,a microbiologist, an epidemiologist and avet. The team calculated the risk ofinhalation anthrax from an analysis of thedeaths of wool sorters exposed to muchgreater concentrations of airborne spores,as well as the risks of ingestion anthraxand of cutaneous anthrax through cuts orabrasions. Then we were left with theproblem of what to do with potentiallyinfected animals, with dead animals, aswell as that of how you communicatewith the public.

I have described this experiencebecause it is probably the only experienceof the kind that we have. It’s one weought to think about; nothing much haschanged except that we are now con-cerned with people, not sheep.

Chemical terrorism is not difficulteither: it is low-tech. The nerve gas sarinand the toxin ricin are easily made andtransported. Then there is radiation ter-rorism, which does not require a largenuclear arsenal, a dirty bomb will do.

But all of us should think about theease with which illicit substances aresmuggled into Britain. In 2000, drugswith a street value of £789 million wereseized, which shows what might be donewith the materials of bio-terrorism. In the1940s, the use of anthrax in bombs wasbeing touted; today it has been appreciat-ed that overt use is actually unlikely: thesource can be immediately tracked downand retaliation effected.

Covert use is another matter. Covertdelivery, in foodstuffs for example, maybe easily arranged. Concealment mightbe assisted by the use of antibiotic-resist-ant bugs, slow viruses (which takemonths or years to cause disease), possi-bly oncogenic viruses (which can causecancer), zoonotic diseases that maytransmit to people. There are plant dis-eases as well.

So how well prepared are we? I believewe are probably the best prepared coun-try in the world. Certainly, we are one ofthe four best prepared countries. We have,for example, excellent facilities at the HPACentre for Applied Microbiology andResearch (CAMR) at Porton Down in

Nature: still our worst enemySir William Stewart FRS FRSE

The threat to the UK from biological

and chemical terrorism: what can be

done and what is the risk?

Since 11 September 2001, the

protection of the public against

terrorist attacks has been at the centre

of government concerns. On 8 April

2003, FST arranged a

dinner/discussion at the Royal Society

about the British Government’s

response. The speakers were Sir

William Stewart and Dr Pat Troop

from the newly formed Health

Protection Agency, and David Veness

from specialist operations at Scotland

Yard. The discussion is summarised by

Sir Geoffrey Chipperfield.

Sir William Stewart FRS FRSE isChairman of the Health Protection

Agency. He was Chief ScientificAdviser to the Government from

1990 to 1995 and the architect of theTechnology Foresight programme.

Before that he was Chief Executive ofthe Agriculture and Food Research

Council from 1988 to 1990. Herecently chaired the independent

expert group that reviewed the possi-ble health risks of mobile phones.



Wiltshire. That has a hugely experiencedgroup of people that, among other things,runs the UK anthrax reference centres,specialist pathogen diagnosis facilities andthe best containment facilities in theworld for dealing with viruses like Ebola.

At HPA Colindale, we also have theCentral Public Health Laboratory; thatprocesses over 200,000 specialist referencetests every year. We also have there theCommunicable Disease SurveillanceCentre which, within 24 hours of the firstoutbreak of SARS had issued an alert toall doctors in the UK. Within 72 hoursthey had a strategy in place to deal withsuch infections.

On the radiation side, there is theNational Radiological Protection Board(NRPB), due to become part of theHealth Protection Agency. The NRPB isnot just a think-tank, but a practicalmeans of monitoring radioactivity inBritain and protecting us from it. Theyhave been instrumental in helping theDepartment for Environment, Foodand Rural Affairs to set up an incidentmonitoring network, with gamma-monitors mounted across the countryas well as a system for dealing withemergencies; my colleagues, who followme, will tell you what else is in place.My purpose is simply to say that Britainis as well prepared as any other countryin the world.

On the future, I have some thoughts toshare with you. First, good surveillance

and intelligence on a global basis is thekey: prevention is better than cure.Second, we need assured informationelectronically and quickly available ineverything we do: horizon scanning, sur-veillance, models, diagnosis, prognosis,advice and communications.

We also need to focus on upgradingour protocols to make them clear, unam-biguous and joined up. They need towork irrespective of personnel involved.We need better links with the hugeuntapped intellectual resource in our uni-versities, which should be better targetedto support public health protection. Andwe need to be alert without overstimulat-ing the fear factor.

On the research side, there are lots of

problems to be addressed. Is there, forexample, a generic short-term immunestimulant to give some breathing spaceuntil an unknown agent has been identi-fied and treated? Are we naïve enough tobelieve that advances in human genomeresearch will not spill over into thedefence sector? Will it ever be possible touse biological agents to target specificgroups of people? Does that have implica-tions, for example, for the workforce-mixat key installations?

Discovery consists of seeing whateverybody has seen and thinking whatnobody has thought. Dilemmas such asthis will not go away. The cultivation ofcaution and the avoidance of complacen-cy must be our goal. ❐

Melding public health and protectionDr Pat Troop CBE

Dr Pat Troop CBE is Chief Executiveof the Health Protection Agency. She

was previously the Deputy ChiefMedical Officer with particular

responsibility for public health. Sheis also a Visiting Professor at theLondon School of Hygiene andTropical Medicine. Most of her

career has been in public health,mainly as a public health doctor, butalso a chief executive and with roles

in universities.

Research control. A principal theme inthe ensuing discussion was concern aboutthe ability to control chemical and biological research so as to inhibit its usefor terrorist activities. The boundary between civil and defence usage of mate-rials or substances was porous; much science was capable of dual use, andwe needed to think carefully about whether control was possible, or whetherthe best that could be done was for scientists to have some code of practice.Are there circumstances when research should not be published because offears of misuse? Even where efforts for control, such as the ChemicalWeapons Convention had been put in place, and signed by 150 countries,there was a lack of political will in enforcing it.

discussion

This may be the first public appear-ance at a conference of the HealthProtection Agency (HPA), as we are

only a week old. Good emergency plan-ning must be built on what we know andare familiar with.

If we were to have an anthrax problem,the response would be similar to an out-break of Legionnaires’ disease, as they areboth point-outbreaks, and treatment ofpatients for a deliberate release of a chem-ical is similar to an accidental spill. If wewere unable to manage known potentialincidents, we should certainly not be ableto respond well to novel threats. By settingup the HPA we are creating an infrastruc-ture the better to tackle existing problemsthat we can also use to deal with problemswe have not yet come across.

Health protection is about humanhealth. The role of the Health ProtectionAgencies is to look at the health impactsof infections, poisons and chemicals as

well as radiation hazards. One of ourroles is to give advice, which we expect tobe enhanced in value as we weld togetherthe great diversity of our expertise. Butwe also deliver services, notably to theNHS in its response to health impacts. Tobe credible to the public it is importantwe are open, impartial and authoritative.

We must also act quickly. If there areemergencies, we must be able to respondimmediately. I was pleased that on ourvery first day, the head of the divisionconcerned was able to respond within 12minutes to a report of an unidentifiedwhite powder. (We get such reports fre-quently.) We have done well on SARS. Wehave also to be alert to new threats.

We need to improve our knowledgebase and to make the evidence we haveaccessible: there is a lot of education andtraining ahead. We see part of our role asthat of a resource for others.

The HPA, when fully integrated, will



be an amalgam of existing agencies. SirWilliam has listed the chief components.As well as the national divisions we havea range of local and regional staff ininfectious disease control, in emergencyplanning and many with expertise inchemical and environmental issues. Ouraim is that they work together to meetcommunity needs.

We cover England and Wales. In Wales,the local staff and laboratories report to theNational Public Health Service for Wales. InEngland, we have nine regions that coincidewith the Government’s regions, which shouldstrengthen contingency arrangements. Wehave 42 local teams, each of which has a clearidentity and focus. In the north-west, wherethe teams have been up and running forsome time, team members say that when theywere identified as the Health ProtectionTeam, local people began to come to themwith questions and suggestions. Now theyhave set up local websites. We are creatingthese local identities that all the other agenciescan easily come to. Our goal is to build upcapacity and to make sure that everywhere wehave standard protocols and responses.

We are building on the current respon-sibilities of the national agencies. CAMR isnow HPA Porton Down, but we have alsoplaced the new Emergency ResponseDivision there. The Communicable DiseaseSurveillance Centre and the Central PublicHealth Laboratory, which is now part ofthe Specialist and Regional MicrobiologyDivision, are at HPA Colindale, theNational Focus for Chemical Incidents andthe Regional Support Units for Chemicalsare now part of the Chemical, Hazards and

Poisons Division. We now manage the con-tract for the National Poison InformationService. We are working closely with theNational Radiological Protection Board,based mainly at Harlow. We have a smallcentral office in London.

How does HPA fit into the govern-ment machine? We must work in partner-ship with many other organisations, butespecially with the NHS; both of us areaccountable to the Department of Health.In emergency planning, our internationalnetworks are crucial — SARS was pickedup very quickly by that means. But wealso work with the Food StandardsAgency, the Environment Agency and theHealth and Safety Executive, other emer-gency responders including the police,various government offices and localauthorities. We must also strengthen ourlinks with academic centres. We see our-selves as part of a coordinated response.

I should clarify the responsibilities ofHPA in relation to the NHS and theDepartment of Health. The department isresponsible for overall coordination in amajor emergency as well as for liaisonacross government. The departmentwould also take on liaison with govern-ments overseas. The preparation of majorincident plans, however, is the responsi-bility of the NHS, whose trusts arerequired to prepare major incident plans.

Our role is to support both theDepartment of Health and the NHS inpreparations for an emergency with guid-ance and expert advice, to coordinate train-ing and scenario planning, to provide expertsupport in an incident and to coordinate the

overall health protection response. If, forexample, a clinician suspected a patient hadanthrax, they would contact one of our localteams who would contact us nationally andso trigger an overall response.

So, what are the potential benefits ofour existence? The chief benefit is that wewill be a ‘one-stop shop’, allowing all ourresources to be deployed in response to atriggering event anywhere in the country.Because the local teams are all part of thesame organisation, we should be able touse resources much more flexibly thanwhen they were employed by 80 differentorganisations. We should also be able toanticipate problems better and do morepointed horizon scanning, providing earlywarning systems to pick up problemsquickly. We should be an authoritativeand impartial source of information andadvice for the public.

We should be able make an integratedresponse to emergencies. With training,we shall have a more knowledgeable andskilled frontline staff; we shall also aug-ment our research.

We shall not achieve all these benefitstomorrow. But we have a comprehensiveprogramme for the next five years, duringwhich we shall continue to strengthen ouralready much improved infrastructure forhealth protection by building on what weknow. We are a large multidisciplinaryorganisation, but one that is fully aware ofits close partnership with all the other agen-cies, nationally and internationally. I hopethat people will begin to see who we are,understand what we are there for, and beginto have confidence that we shall deliver. ❐

Anticipating an enduring threatDavid Veness CBE QPM

David Veness CBE QPM is AssistantCommissioner, Specialist Operations,

at Scotland Yard. He joined theMetropolitan Police in 1964. He ispresently responsible for policing

serious, organised and internationalcrime and, since 1994, for protection,terrorism and security. In the courseof his service, he read law at Trinity

College, Cambridge.

Iwill round out the story you havealready heard by talking about thenature of the threats we face, which are

an enduring danger. The new thresholdof global terrorism is marked by threenovel characteristics. First, there is therange of the explicit target nations.Second, the geographical span of attacks(as the past few months remind us).Third, the harmful terrorist metho-dology we confront.

There are also three levels of threat,of which the most dangerous are theattacks of high impact, marked by theintent to commit mass murder, such asthose mounted by al-Qaeda itself.Although there has been welcomeprogress, particularly in Afghanistan,

there remain 4,000 kilometres of porousborder through which this threat con-tinues to manifest.

The second tier of activity is that ofgroups associated with or modelled onal-Qaeda. The linkages between thesegroups are closer than used to be thecase. It is relevant that terrorist groupsmay have a common experience ofcombat in the Balkans, Chechnya,Georgia or elsewhere that marks thestyle with which they operate. So thereare emerging regional models of terror-ist activity. In Britain, to date we mostlysee the impact of terrorist groups asso-ciated with North Africa that have beenactive in France and Western Europeover the years.



The third tier of terrorist activity isthat of small groups and individuals,which are no doubt inspired by — andeven linked with — the groups I havedescribed, but which have their ownmotivation. I fear that this will be agrowing category.

Among target nations, three are in aleague of their own. The United States isthe centrepiece of all of the statementsby al-Qaeda, but Israel and the UnitedKingdom are also mentioned in thesame documentation. At the end of lastyear, published statements and thebroadcasts of al-Jazeera, anticipating theconflict in Iraq, also mentioned Canada,Australia, France, Germany and Italy,either because of their previous involve-ment in Balkan conflicts, in counter-ter-rorist operations or because of specificissues — the Algerian question and itslinkage to France, for example.

The geographical spread of terroristactivity is unprecedented. Look at whathas happened recently. In October 2002there were attacks on a French oil tankerat sea off Yemen, on US military inKuwait, on innocent tourists, predomi-nantly Australian, in Bali and then dualattacks on Israeli targets – a tourist hoteland an airliner in Mombassa.

In all cases, the objective was highpublic impact. Simultaneous attacks, ason 9/11 itself, ensure that. So do suicidebombing and man-portable air defence(MANPAD) missiles. So would chemi-cal, biological and radiological weapons,as would improvised but serious explo-sive devices. A MANPAD attack wasfeared in West London only a few weeksago. There were clear examples of plotsacross Western Europe during theChristmas and New Year period to usechemical and biological agents. Andthere has been a series of bombs withoutwarning in South-East Asia during lastyear and this.

The challenge that confronts counter-terrorism is complex. The objective is todamage terrorists’ plans before they candamage the public. What we know isthat the mounting of an attack must bea deliberate process. Having chosen atarget, the perpetrators must positionthe people required and their equip-ment, make detailed plans locally, recon-noitre the target, make final prepara-tions and then deliver the attack. Theauthorities’ counter measures includeborder control, monitoring movementnear putative targets, hardening targetsand the use of logistical means to denyterrorists the ground, their people andequipment, accommodation, transport,storage and finance.

The lesson of the past 19 months isthat we presently operate closer to thepoint of attack than in the past. During

30 years of Irish Republican extremism,we were often able to recognise terroristactivity in the early stages, largelybecause we had the advantage of geo-graphical proximity — in SouthArmagh or Dundalk, for example. But ifthe foe is spread across the geographicalrange, lawless and inaccessible zonesincluded, it is likely that we shall bedealing with counter-terrorist activitymuch closer to the point of attack. Allof us engaged in counter-terrorismmust strive to interdict, on the basis ofintelligence, at an earlier stage than ispossible at present.

The counter-terrorist challenge alsorequires that we seek to understand andanticipate the enemy in more detail. He(or she) will make ever more imagina-tive use of technology; so must we inour horizon scanning. That is how toenhance the defences of all target countries.

To be specific, chemical/biologicalattacks would entail a mix of crisis inci-dent management and of dealing withthe consequences. Our ability to assessand to analyse such events accuratelyand quickly would have an importantinfluence on the public perception ofhow greatly it had been harmed.

But we must also be transparent.During the white powder episode,immediately after 9/11, we were bedev-illed by the media coverage and askedleaders of the media to be more sociallyresponsible: the pictures of people indecontamination gear were adding tothe problem. But the media people said,“If you are going to give us these won-derful pictures of people in moon suits,they are what we are going to print.” Wehave to live with that reality.

We also have a great deal going forus. There is a grand alliance of activity

that has developed in the 19 monthssince 9/11. Political will is critical, diplo-matic initiatives are self-evident, inter-national law enforcement is being rapid-ly strengthened and the combinedeffects of finance ministries and UNdirectives has lent a new edge to thefinancial attack on terrorism. The role ofinternational aid in addressing the rootcauses of terrorism is being discussed.International intelligence moves at amuch quicker pace, military action hasbeen effective, notably in Afghanistan:that combination of multi-agency,multinational and multidisciplinaryactivity is currently the greatest asset ofenhanced counter-terrorism.

I was invited to conclude with a wishlist. Here it is. Three things, please: First,better detection and identificationmethods, especially in the chemical/bio-logical field, that work in the urbanenvironment and are as nearly as possi-ble immediate. Second, personal protec-tion for those who work in the emer-gency services to enable their continuedfunction. Lastly, on decontamination, weneed a move into the ‘post-bucket era’.Sir William Stewart has told you how, asrecently as 1986, they decontaminatedworkers from that anthrax island off theScottish coast by means of a bucket withholes elevated above ground. The emer-gency services are looking for ‘post-bucket modernism’.

I regret not having been able to give amore optimistic analysis of the futurethreat of international terrorism.Realistically, it will change little in thenext five years. Our challenge is anenduring threat, but an alliance of skillsand talents can reduce the risk to thepublic. Much has been done in the 19months since 9/11, but much moreremains to be done. ❐

Resources. There was also concernabout whether adequate resources werebeing made available for the struggle against terrorism and whether they werebeing appropriately targeted. At present the HPA would be cost-neutral, with abudget of £178m (£100m government funding). It was very doubtful if localauthorities were adequately staffed and resourced to carry out their functionsand respond to emergencies: the London arrangements needed urgently to berolled out to the rest of the country. Surge problems also concerned speak-ers: could the NHS possibly cope with, say, 10,000 casualties from a catas-trophe; how could information be disseminated if systems were blocked bypanic calls? The answers lay in integrated systems – networks of hospitals,pre-emptive information delivery, and speed of response.

Finally, there had been great play about communication and information, butwho knew about the HPA? Why had there been no ministerial campaign to makeits establishment known, at a time when the public would have welcomed reas-surance about safety? An opportunity for helpful publicity had been lost.

discussion


the internet

How is government handling thechallenge of the internet? The inter-net is a truly transforming technol-

ogy, opening up real opportunities.Stelios Haji-Ioannou of easyGroup, thecreator of easyJet, told The Independentrecently that he felt the internet had con-tributed more to mass air travel than thejet engine. Hyperbole perhaps, but theinternet and what it makes possible istruly a transforming democratising pieceof technology. As for the Government’suse of this technology, the bottom line isthat government is not taking full advan-tage of the internet and its associatedtechnologies. I would like to discuss whythis is and how we can improve matters.

In a recent benchmarking exercise wecompared our use of the internet to thatof other G7 countries, and to Sweden andAustralia, two notable users of the knowl-edge economy technology1.

In terms of creating an environmentfor the e-economy, the knowledge econ-omy, the UK ranked second behind theUSA in that group of nine nations. In anumber of areas, including the willing-ness of our citizens to take up this tech-nology, we are about third or fourth inthe list, behind Canada, Australia andSweden. In the use that people make ofgovernment services across the internet,we are way down, about sixth out ofthat group of nine countries.

When you start looking at the use thatcitizens or businesses make of other ben-efits of the technology— access to bank-ing, for example, or access to other infor-mation online, the performance of ourbusinesses in accessing and using theinternet—more businesses in the UKtrade online, per number of businesses,than do businesses in the United States.So businesses are up for it, citizens are upfor it in relation to other parts of the e-commerce agenda, in banking online andso on, but in government, they are not.

If you look at the number of peoplewho are online in the USA and the per-centage of those people who are usinggovernment services online, about 75per cent of the 65 per cent of people inthe USA who access the internet regu-larly also access government services. Inthe UK, about 11 per cent of the totalpopulation access government services

online, which translates to just over 20per cent of those people who regularlyuse the internet. If you compare thatwith the number of people who bankregularly using the internet, that 11 percent compares to about 40 per cent, sopeople will do their banking on theinternet, but they won’t access govern-ment services on the internet. That tellsme that government has got it wrong.

Delivering governmentWhy are we are failing to deliver govern-ment services properly online? First of all,we are not always failing. There are someareas that deliver services very well viatheir websites — the Ordnance Surveyand the Public Records Office, apart fromsome glitches, do a great job. The ForeignOffice runs an award-winning websitewhich is heavily used, particularly intimes of world crisis; at the moment, peo-ple are getting lots of travel informationfrom that website. There are services suchas Worktrain, an employment servicewebsite, where people can look for jobswhich is very, very heavily used.NHSDirect, a great service, could be bet-ter but it is a great service just as it is.

A dozen or so out of the fifteen hun-dred government websites that are activeand of the two and a half thousand regis-tered government URLs are doing a goodjob. What of the rest? Part of the problemwith government, of course, is that it is amonopolistic supplier and it is not sub-ject to competition. The cold wind ofcompetition has not blown. But thatdoesn’t explain the success of other coun-tries in delivering their services online.Canadian citizens have access to some ofthe best web technology and they use itvery heavily – 90 per cent of Canadiansregularly access government informationonline. Similarly, 80 per cent of Swedeswho are online regularly use governmentinformation online. In some countries,particularly Sweden, more people areaccessing government information onlinethan are banking online but the reverse istrue in this country.

Something is happening in the UKthat is not related to the lack of compe-tition because other governments havethe same issue. What are we doing

The Internet in business and government

Andrew Pinder

How is the internet changing

business and government?

Representatives from government,

business and the media met at the

Royal Society on 27 November 2002

for a dinner/discussion meeting on the

above topic. The discussion is

summarised by Jeff Gill.

Andrew Pinder is e-Envoy to the

Government, in the Cabinet Office

and works alongside the e-Minister,

Patricia Hewitt who has overall

responsibility for the Government’s

e-agenda. After 18 years in the Inland

Revenue, where he became Director

of IT, Pinder moved to the private

sector; first the Prudential

Corporation, before joining Citibank

Investment as head of European

Operations and Technology.

the internet


wrong? Part of it is unresponsiveness —it is difficult to change governments theworld over, but it is worse in the UK.Part of the problem, I think, is the cap-ture of many government departmentsby their distribution channel. Many gov-ernment departments are big high streetdepartments: the Department of Workand Pensions, the Inland Revenue,Customs & Excise. All are dominated bytheir distribution channel, the localoffices with large numbers of staff whodeliver services to the public, oftenworking very hard in very difficult cir-cumstances, but they and their manage-ment regard that as the only way ofdelivering these services. Therefore theway products are made, the way theservices are designed, is for deliverythrough this distribution channel.

Government has set me a dauntingtarget: the delivery of all governmentservices online by 2005. We need to getthese services not just online, but onlinein a format that is useful to people. Weneed to empower our citizens so thatthey feel they have some sort of controlover the information they obtain fromgovernment. In the past, we have putmany barriers in the way of sharinginformation around departments andthose same barriers get in the way of usgiving a decent, joined-up service tocustomers. There are sensitive privacyand data protection issues that need tobe dealt with, but the Government’sinformation system should be able todeliver to its citizens a coherent cus-tomer-focused service: the informationthey need, when they want it.

A further issue is the one of the digitaldivide. There is a feeling that it is all verywell putting all this money and effort intodelivering these services, but what aboutall the poor people who are, on the whole,the greatest users of government servicesand, on the whole, are not connected tothe internet? What about older people –only about 18 per cent of people over 60are connected to the internet compared toabout 85 per cent of people under 25?

The very act of delivering a serviceacross the internet is an enabling tech-nology that allows other people to deliv-er your services for you. The role ofintermediaries and how governmentmight use intermediaries in the futurestarts to become important. Those inter-mediaries might range from people likethe Citizens’ Advice Bureaux, who deliv-er a very good range of services to about5 million people a year, through to com-panies such as Tesco’s financial services,and anyone else who might want to doit. Now, when you start bringing thoseintermediaries into play, you raise awhole range of other issues. What are the

rules of engagement around an interme-diary? What access do they have intogovernment and how might that accessbe limited, how might it be controlled?

The Government as a monopolisticsupplier is illustrated by the famous storyof the fishing licences. A company camealong and said that it would like to offer,as an alternative to the Department of theEnvironment, to issue a fishing licence. Inthe past you went to the EnvironmentAgency or even to the Post Office andbought an Environment Agency fishinglicence. This company came along andsaid that they would like to offer fishinglicences across the internet but, to do that,they would need to have access to theEnvironment Agency’s database. We did-n’t allow that to happen but the companyoffered the service nevertheless but withsome limitations around it. Then theEnvironment Agency got into the act, putits own service online and the other com-pany had to stop operating. If Microsoftdid that, they would be up in front of theDepartment of Justice or the CompetitionCommissioners immediately because thatis predatory competitiveness. We need todeal with these sorts of issues and setsome rules about how we engage inter-mediaries so that they are not disposed ofthrough anticompetitive behaviour bygovernment departments.

Regulation and democratisationWhat role can government play as a regu-lator in all this? Part of my job is to try tocoordinate government so that it doesn’ttrip over itself in relation to this area.There are a lot of issues around this.Governments, as you often see, tend to

shoot from the hip, reacting very quicklyto something that has happened. It doesthis by trying to do things in the old-fash-ioned ways as if it could still influencethings. An example would be the famouscase of the twins who were adopted overthe internet from the USA. TheDepartment of Health’s understandableinitial reaction was to try to put some reg-ulations in place or propose some regula-tions to ban the advertising of childrenacross the internet, but this is not a deliv-erable piece of policy. It might be a policythat we all heartily support but it is physi-cally impossible to do; dropped because itwas just undeliverable.

Government has to start learning somenew rules about what it can regulate andwhat it can’t regulate. It has to get overthe fact that it can no longer have com-plete control and that is a very big lessonthat government has yet to learn.

Finally, in the area of dis-intermedia-tion of politicians, some might regard itas a good thing but this is not necessari-ly so. We have recently produced a con-sultation document on e-democracy.Everyone thinks about this in terms ofvoting but it is much more about thewhole process of how the internet ischanging the way that society communi-cates and discusses issues, the dangers itposes to a representative democracysuch as our own and the opportunity itraises for a representative democracy ifwe seize it properly and use it but thedangers if we fail to seize and use it.

I was struck, at the beginning of lastyear, just after I came into this job, by aSky poll of what people thought of theChancellor’s pre-budget report and theproposals for the Budget. This poll was

Freedom and control. It was observedthat much of modern technology enabledthe state to control its citizens, but the internet was seen as providing a lastbastion of intellectual freedom through the anonymous transmission of infor-mation. Was this really so? The sheer scale of the internet and the availabilityof encryption made it hard for any government to control.

There was an emerging issue of identity theft via the internet (and, indeed,through other means of communication such as telephone and fax) and regulato-ry regimes had not yet worked out how to deal with it. A role for the UK wouldbe to set appropriate standards.

There were other issues about the identification of individuals on the internet. Ifthe system recognised not the individual but the machine, an academic who couldreach journals via the official computer might have a problem when working fromhome. In response it was said that there were a number of solutions: one speakerproduced a keyring that generated ever-changing internet addresses throughwhich he would be recognised on any machine. The problem was not one of tech-nology but of people’s willingness to adapt to change and political will.

discussion


the internet

Business and the internetJohn Leggate

Internet technology had something of afalse start in terms of the business com-munity. Exaggerated expectations culmi-

nated in the dotcom boom and bust inthe 1990s, which undermined confidencein the technology. But since then thegrowth of the US economy has shown thetrue impact of the technology. Between1973 and 1995 the average productivityrise in the United States was 1.77 per centper year, but from 1995 through 1999 itwas 2.64 per cent on average.Independent studies predict that thegrowth of economies nowadays willmainly come through investment in ITand the internet.

Our experience of digital technologyat BP in the past four years has come at atime of rapid growth. In that time thecompany has pretty well doubled in sizebut, more than that, its reach has becometruly global. More than half the companyis in the United States and about a quar-ter in the UK. To make BP capable of per-forming efficiently worldwide and to con-tinue adding value through the variousmergers and acquisitions, we need fulltransparency of our business performanceend across the globe. To that end it is nowpossible at any moment in time for a BPemployee to be in contact with any otherBP employee anywhere in the world. Notonly that, we can use the system to inter-rogate the physical assets, our finances

and costs and evaluate risks in a veryshort time.

To cope with all this, BP is committedto becoming a deeply digital company,where people have the privilege and theobligation to know what there is to knowat any point in time, to learn of any trans-action you need to do on the web. Thatactually is the company ethos. As we do it,we are driving more and more value andfinding more reserves of oil and gas byusing new technology, cutting productioncosts year-on-year, often attributed to theimpact of the internet. More fundamen-tally, our workforce is much more mobilenowadays than it was before and they canalso operate where they will, around theworld, as and when they wish.

Dependence on the webThe benefits of this technology, then, areplain to see. But the web is no longer sim-ply a tool simply for productivity, it is avital piece of business infrastructure, cru-cial to architecture, crucial to efficacy andcrucial to security of the company. In addi-tion, companies have become verydependent on their IT infrastructure andincreasingly it is the public infrastructurerather than a company-owned system thatholds multinational companies together.

This raises the issue of security. Thereis no single authority in charge of the

John Leggate is Chief Information

Officer and Group Vice President,

Digital Business at BP. He joined BP

Exploration in 1979 having worked

in the early years of his career in the

marine consultancy and nuclear

industries. He is a chartered engineer

and a graduate of Glasgow University

where he read Engineering.

carried out using a completely unrepre-sentative group of people and then waspresented on Sky as being an opinionpoll of what people thought. There wasno cushioning of the facts, no debatearound it, no opportunity for politiciansto act as the shock absorber to put thingsinto context, as they so often do. This is areal issue for our democracy and some-thing in which we have to engage.

Some politicians are starting tounderstand the issues here, but many of

them continue to bury their heads in thesand; they are saying they are not goingto disclose their e-mail addresses becausethey would get lots of e-mails from theirconstituents, which they probably would.We have to find ways of using this tech-nology to engage people much morefully in the democratic process and use itusefully rather than allowing it to behijacked by people, such as the Skyinstant poll, something we are starting tocall ‘mandate theft’ as a concept.

How can we stop that happening?How do you engage politicians pro-actively to stop them being dis-interme-diated from the whole process just as thePrudential door-to-door insurancesalesmen were ‘dis-intermediated’ in1990 by people buying directly? There isa danger that politicians themselves willbe dis-intermediated! It presents a cleardanger to democracy. ❐

1. This work and other background material for this debate is

available at www.e-envoy.gov.uk

Security. It was suggested that companiesfaced a different security issue as internalnetworks were increasingly being superseded by the use of the public internetfor communications within organisations. Companies now had to decide whatinformation should be made public and what safeguarded as intellectual proper-ty. One approach recommended was to make everything public apart from a fewcarefully selected issues. Trying to keep everything secret would not work.

discussion

the internet


internet, no-one is accountable for it, ithas a life of its own, it is growing day-by-day day, week-by-week. But one thing thatwe know about the internet is that it is avery complex network and it wasdesigned from the first for resilience. Ourexperience tells us that it is still very vul-nerable at key nodes and hubs, like mostcomplex networks. If you disable the keynodes and hubs, the whole system can beundermined.

We now see that society as a whole hasbecome very dependent on the internet. Afew examples have highlighted the poten-tial for digital failure to cause havoc.Sometimes it has been a technical failurethat has caused problems, but more com-monly it has been corporate failure, aswas the case with Worldcom. Thisdependency seems to have crept up everso quietly on us, and raises an importantquestion: should we, in the UK, be con-ducting a more fundamental review of therobustness of our national infrastructureboth nationally and internationally?

UK e-businessAre we doing enough to ensure that theUK is a world leader in e-business?Andrew Pinder has summarised theresults of the recent report on UK per-formance in the field. On the face of it thefindings of this ‘health check’ are encour-aging but there are many areas where we‘must try harder’, including the deploy-ment of broadband, where we have laggedbehind Germany, France and Italy.Comparisons, however, were with the G7countries. Although we are getting fitter, Iam not sure that we know which race wewish to be in, or who is the competition.As I travel around South Korea, India andChina, I do wonder whether we are miss-ing the point.

On my trips to India, some thingsbecome very apparent: the governmentand private sector are working welltogether to establish India as a burgeon-ing and booming IT area and they areattracting a growing tide of investmentfrom Europe and the United States. Indiais the world’s top IT outsourcing haventoday. In the whole world, one-third ofsoftware engineers are Indian. In SiliconValley, there are 200,000 Indian engineersworking and similar models are nowshowing up as we look at Ireland, Canadaand Eastern Europe.

As a nation we could certainly domore to compete with such competition.Take broadband for instance. It isn’t just asimple issue of technology. My assertionis that, for each technology revolution,there is an enabling infrastructure. For thesteam engine, the infrastructure was railand for the car, the highway and, for a

modern digital economy, it is broadbandconnection to the internet backbone.Broadband is much more than beingabout a high-speed activity, the big issuethat it brings us is being always on, allow-ing us to access existing systems andprocesses and have them all working andtalking together seamlessly.

The report also refers to other areaswhere we could improve — appropriateincentives from government, tax regimes,regulatory frameworks, public and privatepartnerships. And there is something elsemissing that I spotted in my journeys toIndia, the issue of having internationallyrecognised accreditation for our people andour processes that sell in the global market-place. There are many systems out therethat are acknowledged to have given Indiapride of place. Ultimately, this issue is aboutus being recognised as a national digitalcapability for our people, both in numberand quality compared with the competitionand I would say that the real competition isfrom India, China and South Korea.

To sum up, there are four areas weshould concentrate on. First, we mustensure that the national and international

digital infrastructure is accorded the samepriority, security and resources as otherkey elements of public infrastructure.Second, in terms of national risk manage-ment, we need to map our deep depend-ency on digital technology, know its fullextent, identify the critical nodes andpoints of vulnerability and understandthe critical national risks associated withthese failures so that we can better hardenour environment and develop contin-gency plans. Third, we must recognisethat the corporate intranet is a thing ofthe past. For many years, companies likeBP have invested in their own private net-works but this will not continue. Globalcompanies are increasingly looking tonational infrastructure in the publicdomain as the place in which to do busi-ness. Finally, we need to get the messageover that all businesses, and government,can benefit from embracing the internet.

If we want to make the UK the numberone place in the world to do e-business, ifwe are really serious about this issue, wewill need to see further acts of leadershipfrom government, from industry and fromacademia to make it happen. ❐

Government services. The Governmenthad set itself the target of making its serv-ices to the public available online by 2005 and was more than half way there.Projections for the remaining services tended, however, to be hockey-stickcurves, with a lot to be achieved in the last few months before the deadline. Itwas not necessarily sensible to make all government services available online.For some it would not be appropriate, for others it would cost too much.There would be no point, for example, in making licences for burials at seaavailable on line, as very few were issued. This view was challenged, however:if the issue of such licences were offered to the private sector, someonewould be sure to rise to the challenge and create an unforeseen boom in buri-als at sea.

Other speakers called for a wider change of attitudes. The technology wasimproving so fast that the real constraints on the use of the internet were social,and what mattered was how organisations related to the public and to their ownstaff. Civil servants were used to doing things to people, not receiving thingsfrom them, and played safe. The Government was keen to use the internet toconvey its messages but was not so interested in what people thought.Individuals would use the internet when it was to their advantage to do so andwould use Government services when they wanted something.

It was suggested that the government ought to give computers and broadbandinternet access to people with low incomes who were the major users of some gov-ernment services. This would pay for itself in efficiency savings for the Governmentand, if online voting were introduced, would strengthen democracy. In reply it wassaid that little research had been done on the benefits of free access to the internetfor citizens, and that such assessments as had been made in the UK had not pro-duced a convincing case. Instead the government had gone for promoting publicaccess to shared computers in UK Online centres and public libraries.

discussion


the internet

The growth of the internet has beenan engine of social change, as haveother new technologies, in particular

communications technologies.Communications technology has driven agreat deal of change over the past threecenturies. We are now experiencing thethird in a succession of huge changes thathave transformed our lives.The first of these was a change in thecost of transporting goods. In the 19thcentury, Europe’s population grew fasterthan ever before because technologyreduced the cost of transporting goods— steamships and the railways and theircontribution to bringing grain fromNorth America.

In the 20th century, the big change wasin the cost of transporting people. Themotor car gave ordinary people thedegree of choice about what they coulddo that had previously only been availableto the wealthy. The rapid fall in the cost oflong-haul air travel made possible therunning of multinational companies, thedevelopment of tourism into the world’slargest industry and now, of course,migration from the poor world to the richon an absolutely unprecedented scale.

Now we see the internet and relatedtechnologies delivering a fall in the cost oftransporting ideas, information andknowledge. These changes will dominatethe years ahead of us.

When the internet came on the scenein the mid 1990s, many people assumedthat its main effect would be on the way inwhich companies related to individuals.We heard a lot about business-to-con-sumer retailing and about how we weregoing to buy everything, from books togroceries, with a click of the mouse on theinternet. That has only partly happened;

we buy some books from amazon.com butWaterstones and Hatchards in the highstreet are still doing nicely. Rather, themain effects have been within companies,affecting the structure of companies and,in future, within government, affecting thestructure of government.

Let me give you a couple of examplesof how change has taken place withincompanies. A growing number of compa-nies buy at least some of their suppliesthrough an online catalogue which tellstheir employees what they can buy andwhere and how and delivers the orderselectronically. This allows the company tomake considerable savings through bulkpurchasing, but it also creates a uniformi-ty within companies and, by doing that, italso makes such markets much harder forsmall producers to get into.

Another effect is the way in which com-panies are increasingly able to see what ishappening across the whole of their supplyand distribution chain at one time. Thepioneer has been Dell Computers in theUnited States. Someone wanting to buy aPC from Dell can click on an online orderform and that order is then accessible toDell’s own suppliers. They can see, as itwere, through Dell directly to the customerand can begin to produce what is wantedas quickly as possible. So Dell has a muchlower amount of supplies in its stock thando other companies in the computer busi-ness. When you are selling something thatis falling in price all the time, cutting yourstocks is very important.

Changing the way we operateIt is important to take on board just whythe internet and its related technologiesare so important. First, as mentioned

The internet as a driver of social change

Frances Cairncross

Frances Cairncross is chair of the

Economic and Social Research

Council, Management Editor of

The Economist, and a regular presen-

ter of BBC Radio Four’s Analysis

programme. Her latest book,

The Company of the Future, has just

been published. She has written two

books about the environment and is

also the author of The Death of

Distance, a study of the economic

and social effects of the global com-

munications revolution.

Tax revenue. The internet was not just atool for governments to use but alsothreatened their tax revenues. There was a need for rules for doing businesson the internet, but politicians also needed to learn to live with the fact that ithad created its own international economy. Another participant observed thatthe internet had already damaged the sales tax revenue on which many USstates were dependent, and suggested that in the longer term governmentswould be less able to collect indirect taxes and would therefore be less able toprovide services. The period of high taxation and high government provision inthe UK after the Second World War would turn out to be a historical oddity.

discussion

the internet

12 FST JOURNAL >> JULY 2003 >> VOL. 17 (10))

above, it is a technology that is changingthe way individuals and societies act andit is all-pervasive in a way that few inno-vations can be. The effects of the use ofelectricity offer the nearest parallel.

Second, we are seeing an extraordinaryfall in the cost of a service, the cost of theinternet, the cost of communicationscapacity and the cost of computer storageand processing power. This fall exceeds,by orders of magnitude, the extent towhich the cost of electricity declined inthe 30 years from 1890 to 1920 when itcame down in real terms on average by 6 per cent a year.

Third, we are seeing the growth of atechnology that has chameleon proper-ties, which can do all sorts of differentthings. It is a technology that makes youthink globally right from the start. Youbuy the book from the bookshop inSeattle without ever realising that that iswhat you are doing. You book ticketsfrom an Irish airline, again, without everthinking that that is what you are doing.From the beginning, you think globallyand this makes markets work better, itdelivers more information and morechoice to buyers.

Finally, this is a technology that speedsand disseminates innovation like nothingthat has gone before it. You come up witha new idea for your company, you comeup with some idea, something new thatyou want to do, some new product andalmost immediately the whole worldknows about it. It makes it possible foreverybody to look in your shop windowand see what is there, for lots of othercompanies to see how you are doingthings. Therefore the pace of innovationbecomes speedier and, if you can under-stand what is happening, available tomany, many more people.

The way forwardBoth government and business will beirreversibly changed by the new onlinetechnologies. This group of technologiesinfluences service industries and the effi-ciency with which they operate even morethan it changes manufacturing.Government, of course, is the largest pro-ducer of services in any country. Wherecompanies are starting to integrate the

internet and its possibilities rapidly intowhat they do and how they do it, theyvery often find that the traditionalboundaries are broken down.

Companies increasingly find thatthey need to reorganise the way theyrelate to their customers because of theinternet, and government will face simi-lar pressures. For example, if you wantto set up a company today, you have togo to Companies House, Customs &Excise for VAT, all sorts of different gov-ernment agencies, before you are actual-ly in business. But the internet pushesgovernment to create a one-stop shopand that may ultimately require changesbetween government departments thatmay be very difficult to achieve.

There are also implications for theway governments regulate their citizens’activities. Regulation is usually national-ly or at least geographically determined.It is not something that readily crossesborders and yet this is a technology thatvery readily does cross borders. If youbuy your book from Amazon and itdoesn’t turn up, to whom do you com-plain? The answer is probably that youcomplain to the credit card companywhich also crosses borders; you don’tcomplain either to the British govern-ment or to the American government.

So there is a challenge to governmenthere and the challenge of course takesmany different forms. Policing, privacy,pornography, piracy… the list of prob-lems facing government in the newenvironment is extensive. Some of theproblems spring from the way the inter-net offers individuals new direct access

to markets and products. So, while inthe past, government might have beenregulating companies or large institu-tions, bookshops selling lewd magazinesor people in Hong Kong who werepirating compact disks, in future gov-ernment may increasingly be dealingwith offences committed by individualsin their own homes —a new problemfor those attempting to regulate.

Then there’s the digital divide. Doesit really exist? Does it matter?Obviously, there are many developingcountries that feel that they are beingleft out of this revolution. It is notalways clear, though, whether they arebeing left out because the technology isexpensive or because they have pooreducation policies or national telecommonopolies that get in the way of thedistribution of access.

Finally, what is in all this for Britain?Are there ways in which we can benefitfrom this as a country? We have a num-ber of advantages here. First we have aneconomy that is relatively open. We havethe benefit of speaking the English lan-guage which has become the worldoperating system for this technology. Weare more closely plugged in to whathappens in the United States — worldleader in this technology — than mostother countries. I think that the mostinteresting question is whether there anyways in which our government, by mov-ing rapidly down the e-path, can actual-ly achieve benefits that could give acomparative advantage in economicterms that would be international andnot just national. ❐

Standardisation. One speaker suggestedthat the internet needed standardisation,so that users could easily find their way around different websites. It had takentime for the pedals in cars to adopt a standard layout, the Model T Ford havinga notably odd arrangement. One source of uniformity was monopoly. It was notclear how standards would be set for the internet. Some came of their ownaccord, though this had not yet produced a recognised way of signing off an e-mail. For some purposes government action was needed, but in other areasstandards might emerge naturally from competition and consumer preference.

discussion

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Kilgerran lecture


“Professor Burland, can you give us a 100per cent guarantee that the structuralstate of our building will not be affecteddetrimentally by the construction of theJubilee Line Extension tunnels”? I was giving evidence on behalf ofLondon Underground Ltd to theParliamentary Committee examining theJubilee Line Extension Bill. The tunnelsrun between two 22-storey tower blocksat Canada Water. The residents were veryconcerned, very articulate and very wellrepresented by one of their members.

Giving evidence on behalf of the resi-dents, the MP for Bermondsey, SimonHughes, stated that these tower blocks hadall the ingredients of the Ronan Pointtower block. Built in the 40s from pre-castconcrete slabs with poor connections, acorner of Ronan Point had suffered pro-gressive collapse in May 1968 due to a gasexplosion on the 18th floor. But theCanada Water tower blocks were of a total-ly different construction, a robust rein-forced concrete continuous frame notprone to progressive collapse. Explainingthis to the local residents involved manymeetings and site visits; it was clearly veryimportant to take their concerns seriouslyand to be seen to do so.

This case history has proved a valuablepart of our civil engineering undergradu-ate teaching of the wider issues of engi-neering and society. First I set the sceneand explain the technical issues involved. Itake the students through the proceduresinvolved in a Parliamentary hearing andgive them the questions I was asked by thevarious petitioners …. but not my answers.The students are then given the relevantextracts from Hansard (House ofCommons Debates) and are formed intogroups representing one of the partiesinvolved – the promoter, the design engi-neer, the expert witness for the promoter,the local MP, the residents and their expertwitness.

This role play is an effective way of get-ting a strong message across to studentsthat the technical side of engineering isonly a part of their responsibilities. Theylearn that lay people can be intelligent,articulate, imaginative and unimpressed bytechnical jargon. Interestingly, the grouprepresenting the residents usually winsbecause they can easily relate to peoplewhose homes are threatened!

As part of a research project into the

response of buildings during the construc-tion of the Jubilee Line Extension (JLE),we measured the movements of the towerblocks during the passage of the tun-nelling machines between them. The sub-sidence was barely detectable, less thantwo millimetres.

Design and analysisThe Canada Water tower blocks form avaluable introduction for students to theconcepts of design and analysis in engi-neering. I illustrate the difference by pre-senting the students with the followingprovocative statement:

“A design that relies for its success on aprecise calculation is likely to be a BADdesign”.

I then give the students an illustrationof a three-legged milking stool supportinga milkmaid weighing 60kg. When askedhow much load is carried in each leg, theanswer comes straight back – 20 kg. Whenshown a four-legged stool, most students(and many practising engineers) willmaintain that each leg carries 15 kg.Unfortunately this is not the correctanswer. It assumes that the legs are ofexactly equal length and that the floor isperfectly flat. In reality neither of these isever true. To obtain an exact answer it isnecessary to know the precise lengths ofeach leg, the profile of the floor surfaceand the way the material composing thestool deforms under load. But this preciseanswer is of little value because the stoolwill be moved from one position to anoth-er where the floor profile differs. A safesolution is to design each leg for 30 kg loadsince the stool will generally be rockingslightly on two legs.

This example leads on to the importantconcepts of brittle and ductile behaviour. Ifthe legs of the stool are made from a brittlematerial that snaps when loaded excessive-ly, a kick from the cow could break one ofthe legs. However, if the stool is made of aductile material that can deform withoutsnapping, then the kick from the cow willonly cause the leg to bend. Moreover thereis scope for the redistribution of loadbetween the legs when the ground isuneven or the legs are not exactly of equallength. Ductility and robustness are vitalprinciples in the design of buildings foruncertain loading such as earthquakes andother unpredictable events.

Westminster underground stationThe successful construction of the newWestminster underground station repre-sents the outcome of about 40 years ofresearch into the influence of deep exca-vations and tunnelling on adjacent build-ings. In the 1960s, when I was involvedwith the design of the excavations forBritannic House and the Barbican ArtsCentre, our ability to model complexbehaviour of the ground on the comput-er was very limited. However, over theyears we made predictions of movementsfor a succession of deep excavations inLondon prior to construction, comparedthem with site measurements made dur-ing construction and refined andimproved our testing and modellingmethods. As a result of this iterativeprocess, coupled with the rapid growth incomputational power, we were able pro-gressively to improve our models of theground behaviour.

At Westminster, access to the Jubileeunderground line is by escalators in a 40-m deep excavation. The computer model-ling showed that the foundations of theBig Ben clock tower were likely to experi-ence significant subsidence during tun-nelling and excavation. The contractor,Balfour Beatty/AMEC, devised a novel

Engineering and ivory towers?The Foundation’s 2002 Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Award Lecture was delivered on 2 October 2002 atthe Royal Society by Professor John Burland DSc(Eng) FREng FRS who has been responsible formany large ground engineering projects.

Fig. 1 The Tower of Pisa was close tofalling over.

Kilgerran lecture


method of controlling the move-ments of the tower by frequent injec-tions of grout into the groundbeneath the foundations. By thismeans the movements of the clocktower were kept within specified lim-its such that no significant damagewas caused to the Palace ofWestminster. The project wasextremely demanding, highly innova-tive and very successful. The con-struction of the Jubilee LineExtension has perhaps not been giventhe public recognition it deserves.Techniques of computer modellingand construction of the type used atthe new Westminster Station will findwide applications worldwide.

The process is of course nothingmore nor less than the scientific method. Itis this iterative process that underlies thedevelopment of engineering knowledgeand experience which then feeds into guid-ance documents, codes and standards. Realdangers exist when the basis of the guid-ance is not understood or has been forgot-ten, as this may threaten safety and inhibitinnovation.

The Leaning Tower of PisaThe rigorous application of the scientificmethod in engineering is well illustratedin the approach to stabilising the LeaningTower of Pisa. Following the collapse ofthe civic tower of Pavia in 1989 due tofailure of the masonry, the Leaning Towerof Pisa was closed to the public and acommission was established to advise onand implement stabilisation measures.The 60-m high tower leans southwards bynearly 5 m (Fig.1).

The 14-member commission consistedof academic experts in architectural con-servation, architectural history, fine arts,archeology, structural engineering andgeotechnics. Decisions were taken bymajority vote.

Establishing the history of inclinationproved crucial in assessing the mechanismof behaviour of the tower. The axis of thetower is not straight; it bows northwards.In an attempt to correct the lean duringconstruction, tapered blocks of masonrywere used at each floor level to bend theaxis away from the lean. Using sophisti-cated computer modelling we were able toreproduce the history of the tower’s tilt,and, in so doing, win the trust of most ofthe non-technical members of the com-mission. The analysis showed clearly thatthe tower was very close to falling over.The mechanism was one of leaning insta-bility caused by the low stiffness of theunderlying ground rather than its lowstrength. Children trying to build brick

towers on a soft carpet will be familiarwith the phenomenon!

In addition, an important fact emerged– the motion of the foundations has beensuch that the north side has been rising.The tower was close to instability but also apossible temporary stabilisation measurewas available: placing a counterweight onthe north edge of the foundations wouldreduce the overturning moment.Accordingly, a pre-stressed concrete ringwas cast around the base of the tower tosupport a counterweight in the form oflead ingots weighing 9 tons each. BetweenJuly 1993 and February 1994 about 600tons of lead was placed on the concretering, reducing the inclination by about 12mm and reducing the overturningmoment by about 10 per cent.

Having temporarily improved the sta-bility, a permanent solution was thensought that would reduce the inclinationby half a degree; not enough to be visi-ble but enough to reduce the stresses in the masonry and stabilise the foundations.

A method known as soil extractiongradually evolved (Fig.2). This involvesinstalling a number of soil extractiontubes adjacent to and just beneath thenorth side of the foundation. How couldwe be sure that removal of soil frombeneath the high side would not createmore instability? A key finding, first iden-tified by one of my MSc students, HelenEdmunds, was the existence of a criticalline located about half a radius in fromthe northern edge of the foundation.Provided soil extraction from beneath thefoundation took place north of this linethe response of the tower appeared alwaysto be positive; however, extraction southof this line would create instability.

A carefully developed system of com-munication and control was establishedbetween the site and myself. This involveda system of twice daily faxes from the sitecontaining real-time information on theinclination and settlement of the tower. Iissued a daily fax summarising theobserved response, commenting on it andthen giving a signed instruction for thenext extraction operation.

Two phases of soil extraction wereplanned: a preliminary phase over a limit-ed width to test the method, followed byfull soil extraction over the whole width ofthe tower foundation. On 9 February 1999,in an atmosphere of great tension, prelimi-nary soil extraction commenced using 12extraction tubes. The response of the towerwas favourable and by July 1999 the top ofthe tower had been moved northwards byabout 3 cm. The commission was con-vinced that it was safe to undertake soilextraction over the full width of the foun-dations, and between December 1999 andJanuary 2000, 41 extraction holes wereinstalled at 0.5m spacing. Full soil extrac-tion commenced on 21 February 2000 andby June 2001 the inclination of the towerhad been reduced by 10 per cent (50cm atthe top) and all the lead weights had beenremoved. The tower was re-opened to thepublic in December 2001 and all the indi-cations are that it is remarkably stable.

Grounded in science, engineering isessentially creative with the design andconstruction of each new project requiringlateral and innovative thinking, flexibilityin overcoming challenges and often theshouldering of great responsibility. Theability to explain the essence of the projectto non-specialists and to win their confi-dence is just as important as the rigorousapplication of scientific principles. ❐

Fig. 2 Drills were installed to extract soil.


foot and mouth disease

A fter the end of the outbreak of footand mouth disease in 2001 therewere, in effect, three official inquiries.

The first, on the future of farming by SirDon Curry, emphasised the lack of profitsin livestock farming and recommended ashift of financial support away from subsi-dies for production towards protection ofthe environment. Whether that is now fea-sible given the current difficulties in imple-menting any significant changes to theCommon Agricultural Policy, I don’tknow, but that was the primary thrust.Curry also commented on the seriousnature of the animal health problems thathave hit this country and damaged at leastthe image if not the industry quite serious-ly – salmonella in eggs, E. coli, TB, BSE,foot and mouth and so on.

The second inquiry, headed by Dr IainAnderson, focused on a report entitledLessons learned from 2001 and how it wasmanaged.

Our inquiry, the third, was carried outunder the auspices of the Royal Society andproduced a forward-looking report focus-ing on science and management. Together,these two elements will improve our meansof combating these diseases in the future.

We had a large committee that includ-ed farmers, practising veterinarians,experts in consumer affairs, a senior vet-erinary administrator with much EUexperience and a bevy of scientists,enabling us to produce a report from avery broad range of people involved inthese issues.

The report is heavy and dense; if wewish to change the way in which thefuture outbreaks were handled, then wehad to argue our case closely. The reportalso covers a number of other diseasessuch as blue tongue. I understand that theDepartment of Environment, Food andRural Affairs (DEFRA) will give their for-mal response to the two key officialinquiries (this and the one chaired by IainAnderson) soon after this meeting.

There have also been many otherinquiries on the foot and mouth outbreak.From these I would draw your attentionparticularly to the European Parliament’stemporary FMD Committee, as they pro-vide the key contextual backgrounds tothe outbreak. Because they were known tobe international problems, exotic diseaseslong ago became an interest of the WorldTrade Organisation (WTO); hence theyare also an EU responsibility.

I spent time with the Irish EUCommissioner, David Byrne, who isresponsible for the upcoming ‘blockbuster’

directive on how to handle foot andmouth. Byrne’s speech to the EUParliamentary Committee of 12September (2002) was most encouraging.As in our inquiry, he sees the need formany significant changes and a new strat-egy that combines recognising that live-stock farming is an economic businesswith profound changes in the attitude ofthe public. The problem of balancingthese two difficult areas caused much ofthe contention last year; they have to bewell balanced in the future.

Whatever strategy is adopted, speed isof the essence, particularly when animalsare left totally unprotected against a high-ly infectious disease.

Contingency plansOur first recommendation is that the UKGovernment brings before Parliament aframework for the contingency plans. Thereason for making that recommendation istwofold. The first is that, whatever strate-gies— mass culling, emergency vaccina-tion, closing the countryside and so on—are adopted, they will be highly contentiousto someone or other. For the executive tobe empowered, the Government’s contin-gency plans must be accepted by societyahead of an outbreak. Also, the contingencyplans need to be regularly rehearsed andupdated. In our view they also require aformal three-yearly assessment.

Our committee saw the handling ofthese outbreaks as falling into one of twoboxes. One box, I will refer to later again, ishow to improve the existing tools that areused to predict and fight an outbreak. Wefelt an obligation to look at all the alterna-tives to avoid mass culling. This study wasled by Professor Ian McConnell’s sub-group. The only realistic way of handlingthis microbial disease is by vaccination,ideally routine vaccination. It is only 11years since the rest of the EU stopped rou-tinely vaccinating cattle, so, on theContinent, there is not the cultural blockto vaccination that we experience.

However, routine vaccination is inad-visable. A vaccine capable of doing thejob of lifelong, sterile immunity againstall strains is a challenge, but we becameconvinced that it could be developed.This requires an international effort but ifwe don’t begin a process internationallyto address that, then a decade from nowwe will have no hope of going down thatparticular road. So, one message was tothe international community to developbetter vaccines.

Experience informs future strategies Sir Brian Follett FRS

Lessons learned from the FMDoutbreak. The 2001 foot and mouth

outbreak caused devastation to the

farming community that is still being

felt today. On 5 November 2002, the

eve of the Government response to the

official inquiries, the FST hosted a

discussion meeting at the Royal

Society. The speakers were Sir Brian

Follett, Chairman of the Royal Society

Inquiry, the NFU President Sir Ben

Gill and Elliot Morley MP. The lively

discussion that followed was

summarised by Jeff Gill.

Sir Brian Follett FRS was the Royal

Society’s Biological Secretary from

1987 to 1993. He has had consider-

able experience of undertaking pub-

lic sector inquiries, from the Alder

Hey affair to the electronic network

linking British universities. Much of

his academic work concerns farm

species. He is currently non-execu-

tive Chairman of the Arts and

Humanities Research Board with his

academic base at the Department of

Zoology, University of Oxford.



The existing vaccines, whilst beingimperfect, are certainly good enough to beused in emergency situations to stamp outan outbreak. There have been real advancesin Holland and France over the past twoyears such that one can distinguish betweenanimals that are vaccinated and those rareanimals that have also been infected. Somemonths ago the WTO made a significantshift in the rules that govern internationaltrade after an outbreak has finished. Thisnow makes it less difficult to vaccinate.Emergency vaccination requires extensivepre-planning and I will return, at the end,to the outstanding issues.

Central to our recommendations is‘emergency vaccination to live’. This poli-cy allows the vaccinated animals to liveout their useful lives and enter the foodchain. This is one of the issues that haveto be resolved. However, no-one is argu-ing that emergency vaccination by itself issufficient – far from it. We believe therewill remain a need to continue cullinganimals on infected farms and on ‘dan-gerous contact farms’. Indeed, a suite ofmainly quantitative changes are needed inour approach.

SurveillanceThe other vital component is ‘must movefast and decisively’. First, that requires astrengthened international surveillancesystem. We recommended an EU unitwith well-organised linkages between thethreats outside and what happens inter-nally in the country. One idea that wetoyed with, although it is not in thereport, is a kind of ‘green, orange, red’system in which one could, under certaincircumstances, increase the internal secu-rity in the country to stop the diseaseentering and certainly to prevent it turn-ing into an epidemic.

Second, improved national surveillanceis essential. You cannot set up systems veryeasily to survey for diseases that hit onlyrarely. The national surveillance recom-mendation needs to work with the Curryrecommendations for creating a step-wiseimprovement in the way animal health ismonitored on farms. This boils down tothe links between farmers and vets.

The next component is modelling. Inepidemiology, modelling is a powerfultool for understanding the spread of dis-ease and it needs applying far more wide-ly in animal disease. The application ofmodelling is best done during peacetimewhen one can explore their potential, howthey might offer a set of strategies thatone could then use during an outbreak.This is an area where, in particular, muchwork needs to be done now.

The next aspect is diagnosing the dis-ease – the virus in this case. The world

trade rules have inhibited the developmentof modern diagnostics. We need tools thatwill speed up diagnosis on the farm andthe aim should be a simple means ofdetecting animals that have caught thevirus but are not yet showing the symp-toms. We need to go for a simple litmus-test type of method and development ofthis has begun. It is difficult to persuadethe Government to invest against a remotepossibility. However, in defence we pay outtens of billions a year against the offchancethat we shall be attacked militarily– we arenot breaking new ground here.

Finally, the control of the spread, acontentious issue. The precautionaryprinciple would argue that, at all times,we need to minimise animal movementand have standstill periods. There is a wayforward here and the negotiationsbetween the NFU and the Governmentare interesting and constructive. Duringan outbreak, we can all see what musthappen: slam on movement controlsimmediately.

Jim Scudamore, the Chief VeterinaryOfficer, observed to me, early on, thatwhilst the foot and mouth scientists couldtell him about the molecular biology ofthe virus, they were less sure about howthe virus was spreading. It is remarkablethat the statistics from 2001 and from1967 indicate that 80 per cent was spreadlocally and by unknown means. We needto understand how this virus can transfer.That is not so straightforward becausedoing research on viruses like this has tobe conducted in highly secure environ-ments such as at Pirbright.

Dealing with an outbreak: increasesecurity and enforce culling on infectedfarms and dangerous contacts. This willwork but, no less than five times in thepast 80 years in this country, an outbreakhas turned into a major epidemic. On alloccasions, it has caused great trouble,expense and considerable public concern.Government inquiries followed, two inthe 1920s by Prettyman (when the spreadof disease by manmade transport in oneof the outbreaks was similar to 2001),another outbreak that Gowers looked atin the 50s and in 1968 Northumberlandled the inquiry team.

Our recommendation— and I havesimplified a huge report to retain the onebig message— is that we should use emer-gency vaccination as a weapon of first resortrather than a weapon of last resort. Webelieve that this will stop an epidemic.However, it would be impossible toimplement such a policy tomorrow. Wehave to handle an outbreak with the toolswe have at our disposal but, over the next18 months, the remaining significantissues— when to start vaccination, loca-tion, season, final validation of the testand, importantly, the exit strategy—canand surely must be resolved.

Comprehensive contingency planshave to be developed and put in place andthe work necessary to implement emer-gency vaccination has to be completed. Ihave not talked about what the researchneeds are, that is a chapter in our report,but I have mentioned some of them: bio-security, diagnostics, the role of modellingand routine vaccination. ❐

Inquiry into the lessons tobe learned from the FMD outbreak of 2001, chaired by Dr Iain Anderson CBE. www.fmd-lessonslearned.org.uk/

Royal Society Inquiry into Infectious Diseases in Livestock commissioned by theUK Government, chaired by Professor Sir Brian Follett FRS, published it's reporton 16 July 2002. www.royalsoc.ac.uk/inquiry/index.html

Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, chaired by Sir Don CurryThe Commission reported on 29 January 2002.www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/farming

DEFRA Response to the FMD Inquiries, published 6 November 2002www.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm56/5637/5637.htm

The latest version of the Government's contingency plan for dealing with anyfuture outbreakwww.defra.gov.uk.footandmouth/contingency/contingency.htm

EU Draft Directive on Community measures for the control of FMD.www.defra.gov.uk/footandmouth/revisedeudirective.PDF

Inquiries, Directives and Responses



Empowering farmersSir Ben Gill CBE

It is 400 days today since the last outbreak.We have moved on a lot since then. SirBrian referred to the European

Parliament’s temporary committee ofinquiry and their role. When I gave evi-dence to that committee, I stated fourpoints that they should make recommen-dations on.

First, they should coordinate an earlywarning system, not just for foot andmouth, but for all diseases. The EU is dueto become a much larger body, creating ablock of around 400 million people. It hasa huge responsibility, together with theOffice International des Epizooties (OIE)in Paris and other key players, to act as thecoordinator of early warning systems.

Second, there is a requirement of theEU to coordinate the contingency plansbetween Member States. The need to coor-dinate plans is paramount, because the epi-demiology of any disease varies with cli-matic conditions, with topography, withthe distribution of the livestock species andwith farming practices.

The third element of EU responsibilitiyshould be the coordination of researchwork from an EU context. Foot andmouth is a world problem and the EUought, at least, to take on the coordinationeffort for the European research elementand should seek to coordinate that withother interested countries.

The fourth element that has an EUdimension, that Brian has referred toalready, is the need to coordinate border

controls. It is lamentable that we are still inthe position, 20 months since the outbreakof foot and mouth, of having no adequateborder protection, either in Britain or inEurope. In the same way as we make aninvestment in our armed forces, we need toinvest in border protection, seeking at everyopportunity to minimise risk. We need tomake full use of the vast capabilities thattechnology now gives us.

The second point that Brian touchedon, but with which we need to go further,concerns the level of ignorance that waspervasive last year. The old adage that “alittle bit of information can do a lot ofdamage” could not have been more per-fectly illustrated by a regular correspon-dent, a doctor, who wrote an article in TheTimes in early March, questioning why wewere even thinking of killing animals thathad foot and mouth. The logic was that thestructure of the foot and mouth virus issimilar to the structure of the commoncold, we don’t slaughter people with com-mon colds, therefore we shouldn’t need toslaughter animals with foot and mouth.

As for the debate about vaccination, Iwas told that I was being Luddite for bring-ing up the very points that Brian hasbrought up. I would add one point aboutemergency vaccination, a critical issue thatwe looked at intensely, twice. The questionthat we grappled with at the end of Marchwas: “if you were going to do emergencyvaccination at that stage, bearing in mindthe outbreak of foot and mouth had been

Sir Ben Gill is President of the

National Farmers’ Union. He took

over his 360-acre family farm in

North Yorkshire in 1978. Ben has

represented the NFU on COPA

working parties and European

Commission advisory committees.

He is currently President of the

Confederation of European

Agriculture.

Spread of disease. There was disagree-ment over the extent to which the diseasewas transmitted by farmers and vehicles in the 2001 outbreak. The controlstrategy eventually adopted, based on the slaughter on infected premiseswithin 24 hours and on contiguous premises within 48 hours, was chosen onthe strength of epidemiological modelling that predicted it would minimise thenumber of animals killed. The epidemic had followed the course predicted bythe models quite closely.

Another speaker questioned whether the contiguous cull had brought the epi-demic to a halt or rather caused infection to spread, because of the logjam ondisposal of carcasses. The instructions for the contiguous cull did not reach thedisease control centres until eight days after the epidemic peaked. Infectedfarms had prompted the slaughter of animals on large numbers of other farms,yet very few of the latter tested positive for the virus.

It was argued Dr Iain Anderson's report had agreed that the contiguous cullworked. It was not surprising if animals culled on farms other than infectedpremises proved not to have been infected, because the object was to slaughterthem before the disease spread.

discussion



W hen you are dealing with theworld’s worst epidemic of footand mouth it is inevitable that

mistakes are going to be made. That is anissue that we, as a government, freelyacknowledge because, in order to learnlessons, you have to concede that thingswent wrong.

We had contingency plans in place forfoot and mouth, although one of the manymyths was that there was no contingencyplan. We were prepared, but not for anoutbreak on that scale. There were failures

by farmers within the system of regulation,such as failing to process pig swill to therequired temperature and failure to notifythe authorities that animals had disease forover two weeks. In that two-week period,there were over one million, maybe more,sheep movements, spreading the diseasethrough markets, all over Cumbria anddown to Devon, so that when the diseasebecame evident, there was a huge job tobring it under control.

Foot and mouth disease could easilyhave become endemic in this country.

Updating contingency plansElliot Morley MP

Elliot Morley is Parliamentary Under

Secretary at the Department of

Environment, Food and Rural

Affairs. He is also Vice-President of

Wildlife and Countryside link.

running for about two months, and bearingin mind that by 20 February there wereprobably already 70 or 80 outbreaks aroundthe country (many of whose locations wereunknown), then where did you start to vac-cinate?” We didn’t want to vaccinate a pop-ulation of animals that potentially couldinclude a significant percentage that werealready infected but not showing the symp-toms and there was conflict of evidenceabout the consequences of vaccination ofinfected animals yet to show the symptoms.

These are all points that should havebeen clear had we had proper contingencyplans, proper checking through the systemsand proper delivery of the rehearsals ofthese plans. When we are talking about theneed to understand and better informeverybody, it seems almost to be assumedby many commentators that I was beingbarbaric to regard livestock farming as aneconomic business, but that it is a reality oflife. We keep livestock for financial gain butthat should not be confused with the factthat we keep them to proper welfare stan-dards. It is money that oils those welfarewheels; we ignore that at our peril.

One of the most important lessons thatwe have learnt is the significant costs thatarose from the high level of lack of trust. Inthe period up to about 20 March theGovernment’s internal communicationchannels failed miserably. Also, just as youwouldn’t expect me, as a farmer, to run theHilton Hotel, why did we expect a vet, whois trained to look after animals and assessthem for illness and cure them, to run thebiggest logistical exercise the country hasever seen? What the veterinary officialsneeded was adequate and sufficient admin-istrative resources.

Bio-security is clearly a key issue. It hastwo elements: border control that I havealready mentioned and the farm. We needto have a clear protocol, per farm, of whatis needed. No two farms are the same; it

depends on the topography, whether thereis woodland, whether it is adjacent toanother livestock farm, where the publichighways and footpaths are, where thebuildings are with respect to the land,watercourses, if there common land or is itall fenced land. All these aspects, togetherwith the mix of livestock and whether theyare housed for part of the year or outsideall year, means that there does need to bean unique protocol per farm. The logicalway to address this is to empower andenable farmers to get on with it themselves,based on a common framework of princi-ples and in an active dialogue with theirprivate veterinary practitioners.

In absolute disease control terms, nomovement whatsoever is preferable, butthat is no more practical in the middle ofan outbreak than it is in, as we call it,peacetime. Disease or no, animals go onprocreating: they are born every day, theyare growing and capabilities on farms arefinite. So there has to be some move-ment. Again, this took time to sort outand caused a lot of pain and sufferingthat could have been avoided relativelyeasily by proper contingency planning.

As for peacetime, the considered andbest way is to describe clearly what good

animal health practice is. If you bringnew animals on to a farm, it is goodpractice to keep them separate for a pre-determined period. That should notaffect the movement of other animals onthe farm. We need to define that sepa-rateness and a reasonable period for it.At the moment, what we are facing is aseries of regulations that are so complexthat even those with the deepest of intentto abide by them find themselves inad-vertently contravening them. Regulationsneed to be simple, relevant, proportion-ate and practically based. Only then shallwe begin to regain that trust. Trust isparamount.

The key target that we must set ourselvesin the lessons learnt is that we have torebuild trust, establish best practice andadopt procedures which have to be under-stood and regularly rehearsed. Also, we haveto have an adequate research capability thatis coordinated on a world basis and a strate-gy that is based on testing and proceduresrecognised worldwide. Those are still bigchallenges and there is a long way to go. Butdo not forget this is not just about foot andmouth, nor just about animal disease, weare as much prey to the problems of plantdiseases and insect pests. ❐

Vaccines. For the future it was essentialto speed up the response to any new out-break, with applied research to develop evidence-based control. The RoyalSociety report advised that, with a significant effort by DEFRA, it should be pos-sible to be ready for emergency vaccination by the end of 2003. It was arguedthat the vaccines already available were more than adequate to control any out-break of foot and mouth disease, but good epidemiology was needed in orderto know when to use them. It would not be easy for the pharmaceutical industryto develop a vaccine good enough for use in peacetime, with lifelong sterileimmunity, but it was worth the investment in view of the costs of the disease.

discussion



The fact that it didn’t is a tribute to allthose involved who worked tirelessly tobring the epidemic under control.

Following the 2001 outbreak we saw aneed to review the scientific questionsrelating to epidemic diseases in livestockand this was influential in our setting upthe independent inquiries. We are verygrateful to Sir Brian for his work and toDr Anderson; they produced very thor-ough reports that will influence the waywe approach such epidemics in the future.The reports have also influenced coun-tries and organisations around the worldas well as the EU and the OIE. Of courseEU and the OIE regulations had animpact on the way that we responded tothe disease.

One of the key aspects in fighting anydisease, particularly foot and mouth, isspeed. It is also important to understandthe epidemiology of the disease; during2001, some 80 per cent of the spread waslocal. We can never be certain what thereasons for that are, but we have a list ofcandidate reasons: animal to animal,movement of vehicles and machinery andmovement of personnel; these weremajor factors.

There is a range of issues that needsaddressing, such as the ‘blue box’ bio-security schemes that we put in place,which set out strict rules on bio-securityand the movement of vehicles. Even withrepeated information about the need forbio-security, there were some worryinglevels of failure in parts of the country.

Other diseasesWe do need to think about other exoticdiseases. We have recently put up for dis-cussion a contingency plan in relation toblue tongue, which is not a disease thatwe have in the UK but one that we needto be aware of and prepared for. Bentalked about early warning of diseases andthere are other issues that we have toaddress through the EU in relation tohorizon scanning, tracking the progress ofdiseases and risk assessment. When I wasat the conference organised by Holland,UK and Brussels on FMD in December2001, the OIE presented a rating of riskthat put the UK at the lowest level. Thisdemonstrates that, even when you haverisk assessment and some kind of attemptat forecasting, it can be completely wrong.

I also agree with Ben Gill about theissue of trust. Trust is clearly very impor-tant. There were problems of trust andcommunication that we have to tackle asa government and as a departmenttogether with representatives from thefarming industry. Among the many rea-sons for the breakdown of trust were themyths that surrounded the outbreak; a

range of allegations were being made.The issue of communication was not

ignored, far from it. For example, therewere NFU representatives in each of ourregional centres as well as in London onthe joint coordinating committee. Theywere included to ensure that we commu-nicated as quickly as possible to the farm-ing sector. There are always things youcan do better in hindsight; we have tothink about how we tackle this in future.

Most important, of course, is the con-tingency plan. We immediately revisedour contingency arrangements as aninterim measure because it will take timeto respond fully to the independentinquiries. Now, of course, we are workingon detailed proposals on which we wantto consult widely. Officials have beenfocusing on a decision tree that will setout the factors to be taken into accountin determining control strategies, includ-ing vaccination strategies. This will besomething that we can consult on and betransparent about in relation to the kindof response that we would have in afuture FMD outbreak.

We have also produced a disease con-trol protocol that explains, publicly, whenand where a decision to slaughter mightbe taken. This is part of the AnimalHealth Bill1 that is currently goingthrough Parliament.

Current EU rules require the slaughterof susceptible animals on infected hold-ings but they also allow for the emergencyvaccination of animals during an FMDoutbreak if the disease threatens tobecome extensive. We were ready in thelogistical sense to use vaccination in thelast outbreak but there were difficulties inrelation to the food industry and mixedviews among the farming community.

The real lesson from this is that youcannot determine a vaccination strategyin the middle of the world’s worst out-break of FMD; determining the approachto vaccination has to be done as part of aconsidered response in the contingencyplan. We very much accept the recom-mendations from the Royal Society thatvaccination should be moved up the

agenda in terms of a response to be con-sidered very early on in an outbreak.

‘Vaccinate to live’Our preference would be for a “vaccinateto live” policy. The Dutch used their vac-cination policy primarily to assist withdisposal; because they had very limitedrendering facility they vaccinated the ani-mals before culling them. Pro-rata theDutch actually killed more animals intheir very limited outbreak than we did inour very extensive outbreak, so there arecertainly drawbacks in using a “vaccinateand kill” policy.

There are still issues in relation toemergency vaccination that need to beresolved. There is the need for tests thatcan distinguish between the antibodiesfrom vaccination and from the virus.Such tests are available but have not yetbeen internationally validated.

Under EU law, the first response wouldbe to try to stamp out any epidemic byculling and that would apply to danger-ous contacts. But, within the decisiontree, there will be a point where emer-gency vaccination needs to be consideredin relation to the scientific and veterinaryadvice at the time.

A contingency plan has to be flexible.The 2001 epidemic very much focused insheep, while the ’67 one was very much incattle, so there were differences in relationto the type of epidemic and also thespread of the epidemic.

We recognise the importance of inde-pendent scientific advice in terms of theinput and policy decisions on animal dis-ease control. DEFRA’s Chief ScientificAdviser, Professor Howard Dalton, isestablishing an independent science advi-sory council to advise across all areas ofscience of relevance to DEFRA. This coun-cil will be properly constituted on thesame principles as the Phillips BSEInquiry Report, and in light of the Officeof Science and Technology’s code on theconduct of scientific advisory committees.

We are also taking new powers, in theAnimal Health Bill, designed to strengthen

Trust. This was an essential element andhad been lacking in 2001. Better usecould have been made of local knowledge in dealing with the outbreak. InFrance, in spite of the tradition of centralised policy-making, there had beenmore success in involving farmers in the local delivery of disease-controlmeasures. In the UK there was a case for a bottom-up approach, with farmersbuying into animal health systems that gave them benefits and local voicesbeing listened to. Better interaction was needed between local veterinary sur-geons and the State Veterinary Service and Veterinary Laboratories Agency,and closer links between farmers and vets.

discussion


20 FST JOURNAL >> JULY 2003 >> VOL. 17 (10))

the Government’s ability to deal with anyfuture disease outbreaks. The bill providesadditional powers to apply pre-emptiveculling, if circumstances would justifythat. There are also clearer powers ofentry for testing, culling and vaccination.

With respect to serology, we had to goto court in one instance to get permissionto take blood samples and that held upthe lifting of the restrictions for twoweeks. We aren’t prepared to face thosekinds of delays again and that is why weneed the power to implement measures,within the Animal Health Bill, that arenot dedicated entirely to culling.

I also want to say a word about the 20-day standstill. We have to reduce the risk ofspread by movement controls within thelivestock sector. There is now a debate aboutwhether 20 days is appropriate; we are hav-ing an independent scientific assessment onthat and we have made changes that havereflected the needs of the livestock industry.

In conclusion, there are many lessonsfor us to learn from the outbreak. Thereare lessons to learn internationally, thereare implications for Europe in terms ofthe rules that they apply, there are impli-

cations for the OIE in terms of interna-tional rules in relation to disease controland we must ensure that we have ade-quate contingency arrangements. Wemust ensure contingency arrangementsare public so that people can debate and

comment on them and they must be tri-alled in exercises on a regular basis; theymust also adapt to changing circum-stances, technologies and risk.

1. Now the Animal Health Act 2002, available from HMSO.

www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/en/2002en42.htm

Bio-security. DEFRA was taking steps toalert livestock farmers to bio-security andto develop contacts between them and the Divisional Veterinary Offices. TheDepartment had set up a stakeholder group at an early stage in the outbreakand intended to make this permanent. Farmers had to be trusted to spot thesigns of disease.

It was suggested that the problem of border security was understatedbecause it was necessary to cope with negligence as well as deliberate evasion.The temporary standstill on the movement of animals off a holding when newanimals had been brought in was very controversial. The period of 20 days wascriticised as being neither reasonable nor proportionate, and the rules were toocomplicated. Better tracking of individual animals, together with initial isolation ofanimals brought onto holdings, might offer a better way forward. As yet, howev-er, only cattle were identified individually, and it was argued that a movementstop had to be a permanent feature.

discussion

Recent lectures and dinner/discussions organised by the Foundation are listed below. Sponsors,to whom we are very grateful for their support, are shown in italics below each event. Summariesof these and other events are available on the web at www.foundation.org.uk

events

16 July 2003The Research Assessment Exercise Review:how should university research quality bemeasured?Sir Gareth Roberts FRS, Chairman, Review of

Research Assessment

Dr Chris Henshall, Group Director, Office of

Science and Technology

Sir David Watson, Vice Chancellor,

University of Brighton

Office of Science and Technology and HEFCE

18 June 2003Congestion Management in London:Traffic and RoadworksMr Malcolm Murray-Clark, Director, Congestion

Charging, Transport for London

Mr Mike Talbot, Head Traffic Management

Division, Department for Transport

Mr Jeremy England, Director , Water Operations,

Thames Water

Department for Transport

10 June 2003Adding Value to Research & DevelopmentProfessor Gordon Edge CBE, Chairman,

Generics Group

Sir Peter Williams CBE FRS FREng, Chairman,

ETB

Professor John O’Reilly, Chief Executive, EPSRC

QinetiQ, EPSRC and Calderwood Han Limited

03 June 2003Horizon ScanningProfessor Sir David King KB ScD FRS, Chief

Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and

Head, Office of Science and Technology

Geof Mulgan, Director, The Strategy Unit,

Cabinet Office

Dr Bill Harris, Chief Executive, Science

Foundation Ireland

QinetiQ and the Institution of Electrical Engineers

20 May 2003Redesigning the science curriculum; whatdoes society want?Dr Ken Boston, Chief Executive, Qualifications

and Curriculum Authority

Professor John Holman, University of York

Ms Sue Flanagan, Deputy Headteacher, Forest

Gate Community School, Newham and Chair,

ASE

Pfizer and EMTA

14 May 2003Creativity, Science, Engineering andTechnologyThe Lord Puttnam of Queensgate,

House of Lords

Dr Robert Hawley CBE DSc FRSE FREng, Deputy

Chairman, The Foundation for Science and

Technology

Mr David Hughes FREng, Director-General,

Innovation, DTI

Mr Julian Anderson, Composer

City and Guilds, CCLRC and NESTA

30 April 2003Building stronger partnerships in medical

science research in the UKProfessor John Bell FMedSci, Regius Chair of

Medicine, University of Oxford

Sir John Pattison FMedSci, Director of Research

Analysis and Information, Department of Health

The Lord Turnberg FMedSci, Scientific Adviser,

Association of Medical Research Charities

GSK and The Wellcome Trust

08 April 2003The threat to the UK from biological andchemical terrorism: what can be done andwhat is the risk?Sir William Stewart FRS FRSE, Chairman, Health

Protection Agency

Dr Pat Troop, Deputy Chief Medical Officer,

Department of Health

Mr David Veness QPM CBE, Assistant

Commissioner, Specialist Operations, The

Metropolitan Police

Centre for Applied Microbiology & Research and CodaSciSys

25 February 2003UK in the ArcticMr Graham Fry, Director-General, Public

Services, FCO

Dr Dougal Goodman, Director, The Foundation

for Science and Technology

Professor John Lawton CBE FRS, Chief Executive,

NERC

The Rt Hon Michael Meacher MP, Minister of

State, DEFRA

Alstom Power, FCO and Fugro GEOS

3i plcAberdeen UniversityAdvantage West MidlandsAerial Group LimitedALSTOM PowerAmersham plcARMArts and Humanities Research BoardAssociation for Science EducationAssociation of the British Pharmaceutical

IndustryBAE SYSTEMSBaker TillyBank of EnglandBBCBBSRCBlake Resource DevelopmentBPBRIT Insurance Holdings plcBritish Antarctic SurveyBritish Computer SocietyBritish Council - Science SectionBritish Geological SurveyBritish LibraryBritish Maritime TechnologyBritish Safety CouncilBritish Trade InternationalBrownell LimitedBrunel UniversityBTG plcCalderwood Han LimitedCambridge MIT InstituteCampden & Chorleywood Food Research

AssociationCancer Research UKCCLRCCentre for Policy on AgeingChantrey VellacottCIRIACity & GuildsCODASciSys plcComino FoundationConoco (UK) LimitedCouncil for Industry & Higher EducationCranfield UniversityDavid Leon PartnershipDepartment for Education and SkillsDepartment for Environment, Food and

Rural AffairsDepartment of HealthDepartment of TransportDepartment of Trade and IndustryDSTLEast Midlands Development AgencyEconomic & Social Research CouncilEngineering Employees FederationEngineering and Technology BoardEngineering Training CouncilEnvironment AgencyERA TechnologyEsso UK plcFord Motor Company LimitedForeign & Commonwealth Office

Fugro GEOSGlaxoSmithKlineHarley Street Holdings LtdHeads of University Biological SciencesHealth & Safety ExecutiveHigher Education Funding Council for

EnglandHoulihan Lokey Howard & ZukinHouse of Commons LibraryHouse of Lords Select Committee on

Science and TechnologyHSBCIBM (UK) LtdICI plcImperial College of Science, Technology and

MedicineInstitute of Food ResearchInternational PowerJapan Society for the Promotion of ScienceInternational Power plcJohnson Matthey plcKeele UniversityKing’s College LondonKMC Search and SelectionKobe Steel Europe LtdLloyd’s RegisterLloyd’s TSB Bank plcLondon Guildhall UniversityLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical

MedicineLoughborough UniversityManchester Metropolitan UniversityMedical Research CouncilMicrosoft Research LimitedMiddlesex UniversityMinistry of DefenceMonsanto plcNational Grid TranscoNatural Environment Research CouncilNatural History MuseumNESTANew Product Research & DevelopmentNIMTECHNottingham Trent UniversityNovartis UK LimitedOffice of Science and Technology, DTIOffice of the Deputy Prime MinisterOrdnance SurveyOxford Innovations LimitedOxford Natural Products plcParliamentary Office for Science and

TechnologyParticle Physics and Astronomy Research

CouncilPeter Brett AssociatesPfizerPowerGenPricewaterhouseCoopersPublic Record OfficeQinetiQQueen Mary, University of LondonR & D EfficiencyRailway Safety

Research Into AgeingRoehampton University of SurreyRolls-Royce plcRoyal Botanic Gardens, KewRoyal Holloway, University of LondonRutherford Appleton LaboratoryScience Media CentreScience YearScottish Higher Education Funding CouncilSEMTASevern Trent plcSharp Laboratories of EuropeSoftware Production EnterprisesSouth Bank UniversityTaylor WoodrowThames WaterThe British AcademyThe Generics GroupThe Hydrographic SocietyThe Institution of Electrical EngineersThe Institute of PhysicsThe Leverhulme TrustThe Meteorological OfficeThe Open UniversityThe Royal Academy of EngineeringThe Royal Commission on Environmental PollutionThe Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851The Royal SocietyThe Smallpeice TrustThe Wellcome TrustUK Council for Graduate EducationUK eUniversities WorldwideUK Marine Information CouncilUK Nirex LimitedUKERNAUMISTUnion Railways North LimitedUniversity College LondonUniversity of BirminghamUniversity of BristolUniversity of CambridgeUniversity of DundeeUniversity of DurhamUniversity of East AngliaUniversity of EdinburghUniversity of GlasgowUniversity of HertfordshireUniversity of HullUniversity of KentUniversity of LeedsUniversity of LeicesterUniversity of ManchesterUniversity of Newcastle upon TyneUniversity of ReadingUniversity of SurreyUniversity of SussexUniversity of TeessideUniversity of UlsterUniversity of WarwickUniversity of WestminsterUniversity of WolverhamptonWelsh Funding CouncilsWinsafe Limited

Companies, departments, research institutes and charitable organisations providing general support to the Foundation.


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