209. Professor James, we shall direct our questions to you, in the first instance, and if you wish to invite Dr Chesson to answer, of course, we will be pleased to hear. And Dr Chesson likewise, if there is something pressing that you wish to say, please try to catch my eye and I shall call you to answer. But could I start with a very fundamental question, Professor James, regarding Dr Pusztai and his work and the World In Action programme - because we understand that just two days after the World In Action programme was broadcast Dr Pusztai was suspended from his work on GM foods, his contract was not renewed, and yet at the time of the broadcast our evidence seems to be that you were happy with the broadcast and the fact that he was going to broadcast and possibly bring some publicity to your Institute—what happened in the two days following the broadcast that made you suspend Dr Pusztai from his work?
  (Professor James) Thank you for those questions, they are very important, because it has been quite astonishing how events have been misrepresented, and in the paper I tried to present the process precisely. And the fact is that Dr Pusztai, a very distinguished scientist of the Institute, had been involved in media pieces relating to his general concern, which I understand he has presented to you, and when World In Action approached him I thought it proper that he should be allowed to reiterate those concerns. It is not true that, in fact, we were happy with the events on the day of August 10 at all, I was completely appalled to come in and discover that, in fact, we had no idea what the programme was going to show, although I had been assured by Dr Pusztai that, in fact, it was, again, the general concerns only that were going to be broadcast. And we were confronted with a huge outpouring of demands from regulatory authorities, industries, across the globe; by 9 o'clock in the morning we were receiving between 30 and 50 telephone calls an hour, and there were extensive discussions about ConA transgenic experiments, which, in fact, we knew were not in the public domain.[9] And so this was completely contrary to all the agreement and understandings and apparent process that we had been through. We, therefore, myself, my Deputy Director and Dr Andrew Chesson, went to see Dr Pusztai and relieved him of what was an enormous onslaught by the media, by 9 o'clock in the morning, on the Monday, and we discovered that, in fact, he had been grilled for a considerable period of time. And we were exasperated that, in fact, there was all this unpublished data, in odd forms, with completely different interpretations, relating to ConA, already out in the media. And the dilemma was, we did not know. He assured us that there was nothing coming up in World In Action, but we had no idea what was coming up in World In Action; but, given the extraordinary intensity of debate about what was going on, we thought that it would be proper to put the lid on what was being talked about by giving the minimum information possible, which was actually almost irrelevant to the nature of the studies, in other words, the ConA transgenic potato. And that is why we, on the Monday, tried to contain it, and, despite the fact that Dr Pusztai had released this in what we all recognised was an improper way, I tried to defend him by, in fact, simply stating, on the basis of the evidence that he presented to us, that this was what had been done, that actually we would be taking any discussions to the committee, we did not intend that these results should be generated and out in the public domain until they had been properly scrutinised, and we presented the minimum information possible.

  210. Did it occur to you, Professor James, that, if you were unhappy with the amount of media publicity that Dr Pusztai was receiving, or the answers he might be giving, you could just have asked him to cease giving interviews to the press, without necessarily suspending him and preventing him having access to his own work? Did you not think the suspension was a very harsh way of dealing with the matter? And did you give Dr Pusztai reasons for the suspension, at the time?
  (Professor James) The first question relates to the reasons for the suspension; they were entirely different reasons, because on the Tuesday evening, having defended Dr Pusztai, despite the release of unpublished data, for two days, to our horror we were told by his assistants that the experiments had not, in practice, been conducted. And, therefore, we were suddenly confronted with what I termed a complete disaster, in that we appeared to be portraying—

  211. Can we just pause there? We are now being told, in this Committee, that there had been results broadcast on World In Action from experiments that had not been conducted; am I right, is that what you have just said?
  (Professor James) I did not say that, but that, in addition, is true.

  212. Right. Please continue?
  (Professor James) It is quite important to understand that, the discussion that had occurred, and you have to be clear that I believe that Dr Pusztai was confronted with an unusual scenario that he had never actually had to cope with before, which is why, on Monday morning, we withdrew him from the media circus; we did not suspend him. We then continued, and I requested that we saw all the data, because there were some extraordinary stories going round and we were being asked to receive delegations from all over the world, being flown in because this was now the biggest story. All my colleagues in Germany, Denmark, you name it, they were spending their whole time in television and radio studios. We still held, and I made it very clear, that we sent that right information on what I thought were ConA transgenic experiments to the Ministry of Agriculture, because I was appalled that this had actually emerged in this way. It was not until the second day, when the assistants returned, that, at a quarter to five, I turned and asked to receive those same results from the previous day, the transgenic ConA studies, and she looked at me as though I was crazy, because those experiments had not been done.

  213. Could I ask, Professor James, why the James Provan press release was issued on the 10th?
  (Professor James) I think that that was, I had telephoned him to say that we were desperately trying to contain things, and he decided to put out his own press release, because he believed, on the basis of what I had told him, having been briefed by Pusztai, that, in fact, there was a general issue. And, although I emphasised repeatedly that the ConA was purely a theoretical model and construct, the principle that Pusztai had already published repeatedly for five years still applied, namely, that, in fact, if lectins—and it had been taken to the Ministry, as I made clear in press releases and everywhere else, we would still need actually to take this on board. I think that Mr Provan, who is a Euro-MP, was apparently in a position, I discovered subsequently, where he was very concerned about the whole of the European Parliament's approach to this. So he saw that he should actually highlight the fact that we needed to evaluate these things properly. Of course, he is Chairman of the Board; I had no control over what he did. I knew that he was going to do something, and you now have that press release.

  214. Did you actually see the press release, prior to it being released, to comment on its accuracy?
  (Professor James) I saw the original press release and suggested verbal changes. I did not see the final one until it went.

  215. But you knew that Dr Pusztai did not see that press release?
  (Professor James) Thank you for that reminder. I had forgotten that.

  216. There seems to be some confusion here, given that we have heard from Dr Pusztai—
  (Professor James) I am sorry, I was not here.

  217. That he at no time, on the programme, or in advance of it, spoke about experiments with ConA genetically modified potatoes, so it is hardly surprising that there had not been a series of experiments using such potatoes. Yet you are telling us that one of the reasons for his dismissal was that you had the impression that he had been talking about experiments on ConA genetically modified potatoes and were horrified to find that no such experiments had actually been done, when Dr Pusztai tells us he had never said they had been done and obviously had never done them. Am I wrong in being slightly confused here?
  (Professor James) No, you are not wrong in being confused at all. And the point is that we subsequently discovered, on the Monday night, when the programme came out, that ConA, as such, had not been specified. But when, in the morning, everybody was talking, and I think we could look for the transcript of BBC programmes, where the correspondents had been in discussion with Dr Pusztai, as I was informed—I had no proof of that—they were talking about ConA transgenic experiments of 110 days with five rats per group, and so on. And when I went down and saw and discussed this, we all came to the conclusion that, in fact, we were being presented, apparently, now, incorrectly, with transgenic ConA studies. I managed the media circus at the Institute and Dr Chesson went to the BBC studios and did three hours, trying to defend Dr Pusztai's whole views, on the basis that, unfortunately, ConA transgenic data had been leaked.

  218. But it did not exist, so how could it have been leaked, as we are led to understand?
  (Professor James) Yes, exactly, but we actually understood that the transgenic ConA studies had been conducted; so did the media. We actually, on the Tuesday evening, turned and asked to see the transgenic ConA, and only then discovered they had not been done. I then actually had Dr Chesson coming to me, and I said: "Dr Chesson, Andy, do you realise that they haven't done the transgenic ConA?" and he said: "You must be joking. I've actually been defending Pusztai all yesterday on the media, on the basis that these transgenic did show this", and so on.

  219. So where did those mythical experiments come from?
  (Dr Chesson) I think there is some slight confusion. There was a long-term study made with conventional potatoes, to which—