WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE 1999

MR T WILLS-SANDFORD, MR D BROWN, DR Q BALZANO, MR T HARRABIN and MR M PINCHES

  120. Who has tried to reproduce it apart from Motorola?
  (Dr Balzano) For Motorola, it was Washington University in St Louis Missouri and for WTR it was Integrated Laboratory Systems in North Carolina. Two independent laboratories; both laboratories used a different form of assay for validation and the assay as explained by Dr Singh for replication and in both cases there was a failure to reproduce the effect. The papers have been published.

  121. You have said today that the NRPB are very important in this whole assessment of data and that you believe them. How do you know they are any good? How do you assess the scientific advice that they give you? Do you just believe them when they phone you up—probably on a mobile? How do you know they are any good or do you just take it for granted that they are the experts? Do you swallow everything they tell you?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) I do not. Because they are internationally renowned and they have an international reputation. I am an engineer. I will pass it to our scientist.
  (Dr Balzano) The publications of the NRPB are read from cover to cover, very carefully and we check very thoroughly to see whether indeed the process followed is rigorously scientific. The conclusions are supported by the experimental evidence. The conclusions are strong on the basis of experimental evidence. The NRPB in general is extremely good at that kind of process.

  122. You said "in general". Do you mean now and again there is a little occasion when you disagree with them?
  (Dr Balzano) No: I do not read all the reports in other areas. I read the ones relative to the electromagnetic fields relevant to us. They are very well done.

  123. There is no argument with them whatsoever? If they say it, it is usually right, that is what you believe?
  (Dr Balzano) I do not just believe it: I really think through it very carefully, I read all the relevant literature which comes out of the major scientific bodies who set these limits and I believe it.

  124. I have never met two scientists who ever agree with each other perfectly on anything. There is always some little tweak and some little argument.
  (Dr Balzano) Normally it is on small items not on something that is as important as a limit level. I should like to point out that there have been several of these committees which have looked at the literature and they all came up with the same limit level. It must be the first time in history but it has happened.

  125. The conclusion of that round of questioning really is to say that there is nothing much to worry about and that the NRPB is a respected organisation setting down standards which the industry believes in. Did any of the panel see the Panorama programme recently on mobile phones which did not quite come to those sorts of conclusions? Do you have any comments on it?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) We probably all did. I certainly saw it.

  126. You stayed up to watch it, did you?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) It was nine o'clock at night so I was still awake. I am sure we could comment on it. There were two major so-called revelations, one from Dr Carlo and one from the Swedish scientist, which we could certainly comment on.
  (Mr Harrabin) The only comment I should raise regarding your original question on the NRPB is firstly that Vodafone is very open: we have seen no research which is not in the public domain and we look across the whole world. We do not just look at the NRPB reviews, we also look very closely for example at the recent review by the Royal Society of Canada. We look very closely at the World Health Organisation. Certainly as a global company, we do not put all our store in the NRPB. That does not mean we do not have confidence in the NRPB, but we look across the world.
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) May I just make a comment on Dr Hardell, the Swedish scientist on the Panorama programme? I do not have the exact quote from his study, but roughly speaking it said "we found no relationship between the use of mobile phones and brain tumours". He found some statistically non-significant relationship to do with if you had a brain tumour which side of the head you were reporting using the phone. The key point was that he said he found no relationship between the use of mobile phones and brain tumours.

  127. How long had it been? Was it a five-year period since the use of the phone? A tumour would take a long time to develop.
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) He produced a full scientific study and within that that was virtually an exact quote.

  128. We will leave the Panorama programme, simply because we could get the transcript of it ourselves and we could watch it, if we have not already done so. Most of us have.
  (Mr Brown) I just wanted to address the question about Panorama really very directly and briefly to say that it seems to me that that programme and a lot of other press about mobile phones are further evidence that the story that mobile phones do not damage you really does not make very good press. Panorama could have said that the NRPB, ICNIRP, the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection, the European Commission Expert Group, WTR in the US, the Royal Society of Canada, have all reviewed all the evidence and concluded that there are no grounds for concern. Perhaps the Committee would be interested to know that all of the bodies, all around the world, who have established these standards, have arrived at what I consider for all the cultural diversity, an amazingly consistent conclusion. All those standards for whole body exposure, for workers are all set at 0.4 W/kg. That agreement suggests a massive consensus worldwide but I do not think it makes good news stories.

  129. You mentioned research earlier on. Could you expand on what research your organisations are pursuing into the health effects of mobile phones at present and how much does the UK mobile phone industry spend on research into health effects every year?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) I will give you an overall industry view and Motorola will then have something to add. It is worth understanding that up to now, under our estimate, the industry has spent about US$50 or US$60 million over the last few years and that is spread throughout the United States' organisations and other international organisations. Looking at the totality of science the conclusion has been what David Brown has been telling you. You might be interested to know that a week ago Monday, a number of proposals were submitted to the European Union for research. I should just tell you how they originated. The European Union decided about 18 months ago that a research programme was needed. The WHO, the World Health Organisation, set the agenda. An organisation called the Mobile Manufacturers' Forum, which is an international forum of mobile phone makers who coordinate and support research in this area, asked the WHO to rate a number of laboratories to do this work. They then accepted those recommendations and basically organised the whole thing. The laboratories—not the industry, the laboratories—submitted these proposals to European Union Framework 5. That amounts to a total programme of 12 million euros. The key point I am trying to leave with you is not so much the 12 million euros but the fact that the agenda for this research has been set by the World Health Organisation. It will be independently carried out.

  130. Is this from the UK you are referring to?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) No, that is a European programme.

  131. How much of the US$50 to US$60 million figure you quoted was from the UK?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) I could not give an exact quote, but I will be quite honest and say, a fairly small amount.

  132. Mobile companies like yourselves have extensive data on the phones. What do you do with this data? Do you use it for any other research or any epidemiological studies of mobile phones?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) Can you be a bit more explicit about what you mean by data?

  Dr Kumar: What do you do with the information you get? Is it used to look at health effects or other health purposes?

  133. For example, do you have information on the usage of the mobile phones by region in this country, by business type, by male and female and from that are you able to draw any information, any conclusions regarding carcinogenic growths in those categories?
  (Mr Harrabin) We have some data regarding our customers, not quite to the level of detail you suggest, particularly because we often only have the name of the account holder rather than necessarily the user of the phone. What we are doing is the four UK operators have recently agreed to fund an epidemiological study which is being run over the next few years to look at possible links between mobile phone usage and health effects and obviously we will be participating fully to share as much information as we can about the particular users who have been selected for those trials to make sure that the scientists have full information.

  134. Will Vodafone share its information with Motorola through the Federation? I know you are not a member of the Federation but will there be a pooling of information for the greater good?
  (Mr Harrabin) Yes, there certainly will. All the four operators have agreed together to do this. It is being done through a university. The university will publish that research in the normal fashion.

  135. One of the criticisms being levelled at the companies which fund research is that it would compromise the people who are actually doing the research. We have seen this criticism with GM foods. We see it over and over again. Vodafone in their own submission to this Committee said that it does not "conduct its own research but supports quality research funded and organised through independent bodies". How independent are they?
  (Mr Harrabin) Our objective is to make it as independent as possible. We wish to be totally open about this and we do not wish there to be any suggestion that any of the work we have funded should be biased. I can quote for you a recent agreement we have come to with the other UK cellular operators together with BT and Cable & Wireless where we have put together a policy on health and safety research and one of the key criteria when selecting the proposals we have received is the level to which it would be perceived as independent. Further, in terms of setting the agenda for the research that we are prepared to support, we are following by the word the priorities set by the World Health Organisation. In terms both of selecting which projects we will support and how those projects are managed, we expect that to be as arm's length as reasonably possible.

  136. Do you publish all those in the public domain?
  (Mr Harrabin) Absolutely. We are totally open. We are not aware of any science which we have not published and which is not in the public domain.

  137. Can we take it then that, although your industry and your association is funding the research and would appear to be setting the agenda, you are saying that agenda is in fact the World Health Organisations' agenda rather than your own, which you are endorsing and funding and that therefore you would say that the public should have confidence in this work and in the outcomes of that research?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) Yes, it is very important to understand that we are not setting the agenda, in the particular example I gave you it is the World Health Organisation who set the agenda.

  138. Are they also setting the criteria for selecting the competent laboratories to undertake the research?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) Indeed they did. The industry particularly asked them to do that, again to demonstrate independence.

  139. You are happy with their research priorities are you?
  (Mr Wills-Sandford) Yes, we as an industry are; absolutely.