UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 499-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE

Tuesday 20 April 2004

PROFESSOR DAVID COWAN

MR CHARLES WOODHOUSE, MR JON SIDDALL, MR PETER LEAVER QC

MR DAVID SPARKES

Evidence heard in Public Questions 65 -194

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee

on Tuesday 20 April 2004

Members present

Mr Gerald Kaufman, in the Chair

Chris Bryant

Michael Fabricant

Charles Hendry

Alan Keen

Derek Wyatt

________________

Witness: Professor David Cowan, Director, Drug Control Centre, King's College London, examined.

Chairman: Good morning, Professor Cowan. Thank you very much indeed for coming to see us today and I will start right away with Mr Wyatt.

Q65 Derek Wyatt: Could you tell us what you think the strengths and weaknesses are of the way in which drug-testing is undertaken in the UK?

Professor Cowan: Specifically in the UK as distinct from internationally?

Q66 Derek Wyatt: Yes.

Professor Cowan: I think we have had a situation where I would say it is something like leapfrogging in that we get differences going on in terms of a central co-ordination carried out by UK Sport and the interests of different governing bodies.

Q67 Derek Wyatt: What do you mean by "leapfrogging"?

Professor Cowan: Things change with time, they evolve. One may be leading and then another would be leading as changes go through. Now, in particular, in the side that I work in, the laboratory side, providing the evidence, we find that where evidence is presented is where we notice the biggest difference, so it is generally the handling of disciplinary hearings.

Q68 Derek Wyatt: Is there a lot of political pressure put on you once you have actually finished the testing to delay the announcement or can you not say anything? Can you only send it back and it is up to the governing body to announce all that?

Professor Cowan: Maybe I should explain. First of all, we are working with coded samples, so we do not know whose sample we are dealing with. We do know the governing body, but if we find what we call an adverse finding, that something should not be present in a sample, we report that through, but for a British event, it goes to UK Sport. It is not for us to present this to any other people, except that we are required under our accreditation, previously under the International Olympic Committee and since the beginning of this year under the World Anti-Doping Agency, we have to report to that body now. In many cases we have also to report to the International Federation, but that report is by a coded sample and in most cases that confidentiality is maintained. I say "most cases" because occasionally information seems to go out into the public domain ahead of any hearing and it certainly has not come from the laboratory and I just put that forward as other possibilities.

Q69 Derek Wyatt: And the weaknesses of what we do or the way it is done or are there no weaknesses?

Professor Cowan: I would like cases to go through more rapidly than they do at present. I do not see reason for very long delays and I know that in some countries, the United States Anti-Doping Agency have now put in a process whereby they will put information into the public domain and I believe it is after 30 days.

Q70 Derek Wyatt: But we do not have that ruling?

Professor Cowan: We do not as yet.

Q71 Derek Wyatt: Do you think there is pressure to do that?

Professor Cowan: I think there needs to be good reason why not to go through the process in a reasonable time. I am not saying that it has to be 30 days, but I think it is very uncomfortable. On occasion, we have been asked to go back to cases a year or two years after the event.

Q72 Derek Wyatt: Because?

Professor Cowan: It has not come to a hearing.

Q73 Derek Wyatt: And that is not your fault, but that is the national governing body or that is UK Sport. Where is the issue there?

Professor Cowan: I think you would probably have to ask others as to where the problem exists.

Q74 Derek Wyatt: Do you feel that as a whole the UK is ahead of the rest of the world, on a par, below?

Professor Cowan: That was why I used the reason of leapfrogging. We have been in the lead for a very many years. It is difficult to say just at the moment whether we are because all of the publicity is with the World Anti-Doping Agency which is doing a lot of work at the moment. We know that the Irish are trying to put all of their system into place, so from time to time you find that other jurisdictions are ahead of us, but usually we catch up pretty quickly or go ahead of them.

Q75 Derek Wyatt: Is one IOC-accredited lab enough? Are you flat out? How many people work in your lab?

Professor Cowan: No, we are not flat out at the moment. We designed our capacity to handle about 10,000 samples a year and currently we receive about 6,000 samples from UK Sport. The samples do not come through in an even load. When we analysed samples, for example, for the Commonwealth Games, then because that was planned, we brought in extra staff and extra equipment in order to do the 24-hour turnaround for the results which were expected of us.

Q76 Derek Wyatt: Can you make a statement as to whether you are for or against the idea that there should be independent testing? We understand there are differences among some of the national governing bodies as to whether they should do it or whether it should be independent?

Professor Cowan: I would only like to say that our work is independent. We really preserve this domain, the integrity of the science and what we are doing, and we are very careful to make sure that we are not biased by any of these outside influences.

Q77 Derek Wyatt: In 1988, which seems like only yesterday, I was responsible for the David Jenkins' film on Channel 4 and went to San Diego and saw his laboratory and saw what sorts of drugs he was producing for the American athletes. It seems to me that actually nothing has changed in that time, that there are always going to be these people who engineer drugs because they can make a market. I thought at one stage we could have drug-free sport, but in fact it is just like life, that there are just drugs everywhere. Is that your view too?

Professor Cowan: I am not quite so depressed about the situation and if I look back to, say, 1960 and the way the Olympics were regarded with amphetamines, I know there are quite a number of issues we have got pretty well under control. There will be exceptions, but if we did not have drug control, then I think we would have much bigger problems than we do at the moment. Legislation in the UK generally has a broader coverage by not being very specific. For example, we might talk about amphetamine and analogues in our legislation, whereas in the USA they are going to be far more specific and they may say, "plus amphetamine", "minus amphetamine", and if they have named all the compounds, they have really created the situation whereby designer drugs are a real possibility, but they are much easier to get a hold in this country. We do not have, for example, a Dietary Supplements Health Education Act like they do in the USA which stops the Food and Drugs Administration from controlling the marketing of many products, whereas in this country we do.

Q78 Derek Wyatt: Where would we, as a committee, look for what is best practice overseas?

Professor Cowan: I am very much in favour of the United States Anti-Doping Agency model just at the moment. Since the problems in 2000 in Sydney when there were claims that they had competitors who had failed drug tests, the USA changed from using the model of the United States Olympic Committee controlling the whole situation and set up a new, separate agency. It may be just because they have redesigned what they were doing that they could look at the whole situation again and start afresh, and that is why I think many countries think, "That's quite a nice model which we would like to emulate".

Q79 Derek Wyatt: In the sort of drug chain, there has been some media comment over the last ten or 15 years that it should not just be the athlete that is banned, but it should be the coach and perhaps the governing body should be fined millions of pounds. That sort of comes and goes, that idea, but would you say that in your understanding a coach would normally know if an athlete from any sport is on drugs or not?

Professor Cowan: Well, many coaches, and I am not trying to tar them with the same brush and many of them would hate me for saying this, but I think coaches have a moral responsibility. They are the closest person to the athlete most of the time and I am very frustrated when speaking to coaches when they say to me, "Well, I don't know about drugs". My line is that they should know about drugs and they should take it seriously in the same way as they should know about what they are coaching the athlete to do. It should be part of their training to make sure that they know about drugs and to warn the athletes about why they must not be taking them.

Q80 Derek Wyatt: So in the elite athlete programme, if we put into that programme a clause which covered coaching and covered that, you would be happy?

Professor Cowan: I would be delighted.

Q81 Chris Bryant: We tend to focus on the drugs in elite sport, but obviously there is a continuum between the sport centre around the corner run by the local authority where people are body-building or whatever through to elite sport. Has there been any substantial work done on the role of drugs in ordinary street-corner, if you like, sport?

Professor Cowan: There have been surveys of drug use and typically they focus on gymnasia, the places where they are likely to get hold of the drugs, so there are some statistics published and I could make them available to the Committee, if you wished.

Q82 Chris Bryant: Do you think that is a significant part of the problem or not?

Professor Cowan: Well, you get the drugs from somewhere and they can be different sorts of substance. It might be that what are often called 'social drugs', drugs like cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy, that they are sold illegally around the country, so that will not necessarily be in gymnasia, but it may be in nightclubs, maybe on street corners, and for many of those substances they are adequately controlled in law. There are other substances, like the anabolic steroids, which are probably of less interest in society in general, although in areas where people might want the behavioural effect which appears to come from taking anabolic steroids, it puts you into a more aggressive mode if you are a susceptible individual, so it does not happen to everybody, but some people are affected by taking anabolic steroids and if you are then using those substances, at what age might you start doing it? A good study carried out in the USA on youngsters actually showed that quite a high percentage of them did use anabolic steroids, males mainly, and the idea was to impress their girlfriends.

Q83 Chris Bryant: So you are saying that there is a significant number of young men for the most part going to gyms, taking anabolic steroids as much for the social effects, as it were, the personality changes, as for the body-building aspects?

Professor Cowan: I suppose the subtle difference of the macho image to change physique, not to perform in sport, but to impress in society.

Q84 Chris Bryant: But then there is an irony, is there not, about sport centres and health centres becoming potentially centres for a whole series of different drug dependency problems?

Professor Cowan: Yes, that is exactly the concern, that they might then be the source where these materials are distributed.

Q85 Chris Bryant: Most of the people who run sport centres have been trained at colleges in PE or whatever, so how good do you think the training is in those educational establishments about all of these issues?

Professor Cowan: Well, it is illegal to supply these materials, to sell these materials anyway under the Medicines Act.

Q86 Chris Bryant: I understand that, but that does not answer my question.

Professor Cowan: I do not know about what they receive.

Q87 Chris Bryant: Moving on to a different area, when you see a big story in the newspaper about some famous athlete being tested the wrong way, one of the first things people question is the process about whether it was the right sample for the right person. How secure do you think that process always is?

Professor Cowan: I have been trying to think of a case where the process has been successfully challenged, which I think is part of the way I would answer that question to you. If we talk about the UK Sport programme, they take a lot of care when collecting the sample and the documentation that goes along with that in getting the signature from the person whose sample is given, the chain of custody of getting the sample through to the laboratory and within the laboratory there is an extremely cautious and very careful chain of custody. Because, in our side of the work, we test the sample not just once, but we screen it and if there is something present, we confirm by going right back again to the sample, so should there be a challenge, we also have a sealed B sample and we test that.

Q88 Chris Bryant: You dropped a comment earlier about sometimes you do not know how, but these stories get out before, I guess you suggested, they should do. How do they get out then?

Professor Cowan: I think it is sometimes that someone speaks a bit too loosely maybe in a public meeting, out in the street, or we may have to change the person whom we are selecting for competition, if I present the scenario in that way, and then the press might hear and think, "Ah, maybe someone has been caught in a drug test", and they then will phone around to the different competitors whom they know are in the selection process and the competitor may say, "Oh, you've caught me. You found it", so it could come in that way. In the majority of cases, it is felt that it has actually come from the competitor or someone around the competitor rather than from further down the line.

Q89 Chris Bryant: So not a deliberate leak?

Professor Cowan: I could not say. I do not know about many specific cases, but most that I am aware of have come when the athlete has admitted it was them, and although a scenario has been established, there was some suspicion.

Q90 Chris Bryant: Because these stories are big news and they are, therefore, valuable information which a newspaper would be only too happy to pay for, I am sure.

Professor Cowan: I understand that and that is why we are extremely careful and all my staff know that it is not quite pain of death, but it is part of their contract of employment that they have to be very careful when speaking outside of the laboratory environment.

Q91 Chris Bryant: Another issue is the relationship between medicinal drugs and doping. As ordinary members of the public, we read these stories and hear that someone has taken Night Nurse or something and suddenly they are bang to rights. How sympathetic are you to coaches and athletes in this area?

Professor Cowan: I read the press like everyone else and I often have privileged information relating to a case and that makes me think, "Well, that's just what's written in the press rather than the facts of the case", so I think there is a bit of getting public sympathy and of course cases are not generally detailed, not in the public domain.

Q92 Chris Bryant: So are you saying ----

Professor Cowan: I do not have a lot of sympathy in most cases where I have the details, is what I am saying, but occasionally I do think, "Well, maybe they've been a bit tough on that person in that case", but I am not judging the case and I may not have been present throughout the whole hearing, so really on a legal basis I should not say if it was lenient or if it was not. One needs to know the detail before one should make such a comment.

Q93 Chris Bryant: Do you think the medicinal drugs industry, for want of a better term, could do more to make these things clearer? I do not know about Night Nurse particularly, but let's say you go and buy Night Nurse and then the next day you read that it has got some element of it which is a performance-enhancing drug. Most members of the public would be a little bewildered that they had been taking a performance-enhancing drug for the last two weeks.

Professor Cowan: I think it is nice where some indices of medical applications do actually describe whether the substance is prohibited in sport. The British National Formulary now has in part of the index how to get information about substances prohibited in sport. I would like to see that over-the-counter cold remedies could bear some symbol or some label to make it clearer.

Q94 Chris Bryant: Like Fair Trade or whatever, some kind of stamp which says, "This is safe"?

Professor Cowan: Exactly, yes. I think that would be very helpful.

Q95 Chris Bryant: Because it might actually be nice for ordinary members of the public to have that information, let alone for elite athletes, when they are going to buy their cold remedies.

Professor Cowan: I think then if it is a member of the public, they are already licensed to be over the counter because they are relatively safe, so it should not affect the normal member of the public. I think this is something very special to the sport competitor.

Q96 Chris Bryant: Just one final question as to blood or urine?

Professor Cowan: The answer to that is both. In some ways we are lucky because urine is non-invasive and you can provide a urine sample without someone sticking a needle into you and many drugs are actually present in larger concentration in a urine sample than they would be in blood, so we have done very well over the years by being able to manage with urine samples. However, because of the control over several protein hormones, erythropoietin was the first example, and blood sample collection is also necessary now, so it is "and" rather than "or", it is likely that we are going to continue to need blood and urine in the future.

Q97 Chris Bryant: So, for instance, if you were testing for cannabis which would provide a more reliable sample, would one pass through the body faster through one system than the other?

Professor Cowan: The body handles drugs by trying to take them out of the body, trying to eliminate them, and the body does that by making the drug more water-soluble. Once it has made it more water-soluble, it will be in a greater concentration in the urine and obviously it is the liver and then the kidneys that actually deal with getting that material out of the body. In most cases then urine is going to give us better evidence of the identification. The problem is what has left the body rather than what is in the body. If you wanted actually to see what was the effect of that time on the individual, then blood would be a much better medium than urine, so it depends what you are trying to do with that.

Q98 Chris Bryant: The reason I am asking this question is because I have read the stories in the newspapers, which of course does not necessarily mean that they are true, but which suggest that some high-performance athletes will take cocaine instead of cannabis because cannabis will stay in their body longer and, therefore, on a random testing will be more likely to come up. Is that true or is it simply a myth?

Professor Cowan: They are two different things. One is a stimulant and one tends to suppress more, although suppressing, getting rid of inhibitions might be quite helpful if you are fearful in a sport. I have had it said to me that with surfing, for example, if you are on top of a big wave, you might want to be on some cannabis to make you a bit more relaxed than you would be if you were a bit more sober. Cannabis does stay in the body longer because it tends to dissolve in fat tissue in the body and that makes it more resistant to being made water-soluble by metabolism, by conversion by the body and hence going into urine, whereas cocaine is a lot more mobile and it does change. It gets metabolised very rapidly and it is a short half-life. I am not aware of that sort of combination though, "I will take cocaine close to the competition", but for other drugs, yes. Certainly people would not take an injectable anabolic steroid which will stay in the body maybe for six months, being detectable for six months if there is a competition coming up, but they would take one by mouth, one which is clear from the body more rapidly and some are clear in a matter of days.

Q99 Chris Bryant: But then recreational drugs like ecstasy, cannabis and cocaine which high-performance athletes might be taking, not for performance-enhancing reasons, but for other reasons of their own, how long would most of those be staying in their bodies and detectable? I ask this question because obviously if you are summonsed and have to appear for a random testing in 48 hours or 72 hours, then the length of that period is obviously very important.

Professor Cowan: We would normally describe that as a possibility of manipulating the sample. Although, legally, manipulation would be after it has left the body, we talk about a biological and physiological manipulation, "Maybe I could take something which will affect what gets into my urine", and the sort of things one might do is if there is a concentration threshold in urine, then drinking a lot of water might dilute the amount in the urine sample and get it below a penalty threshold, so that is one possibility. Although it is banned now, at one time there was the possibility of taking a substance, like probenecid. Probenecid is a medicinal treatment for gout, although not in great favour now, but it actually will reduce the concentration in a urine sample of certain drugs metabolised and it depends on exactly how the drug has been changed. It seems that when this came up and probenecid was prohibited by sport, the athletes were somehow aware of that process. In the area of employment, work-place drug-testing, where one is looking for a relatively few number of substances, there is a lot of literature on the Internet which actually tells you how to beat the test. That often depends on the type of method of analysis being used by the laboratory. Sports drug-testing in laboratories uses far more sophisticated methods, so generally we will get an indication where there may have been manipulation. In my mind, manipulation implies intent and of course we cannot tell that just by looking at a urine sample, so all we can do is to say, "Well, there was this present or that present", and maybe it is allowed and maybe it is not. If it is banned, it is easy for us and the moment it is actually a prohibited substance, if we find this there and it should not have been there, therefore, technically an offence has been committed.

Q100 Chris Bryant: How much notice do people get, do you think?

Professor Cowan: Well, before probenecid was banned, we were doing tests with the Norwegians. They were conducting some out-of-competition tests and this goes back more than a dozen years now, and when the samples were delivered to us, they told us that the competitors disappeared for five hours. In those five hours a number of the competitors had taken probenecid, so it can work very quickly. If you are going to use water, it dilutes the sample because of trying to beat the concentration threshold and it will not work for all things, but if you are trying that approach, then it is time just to produce enough urine which might be a matter of hours.

Q101 Chris Bryant: So if you are a footballer and you are given 24 hours' notice, then that is quite enough?

Professor Cowan: I would rather not be as specific as saying footballers, but if I answer the question generally, my preference with nil-notice testing is that the person is accompanied from the time they are informed that they are going to have the test.

Q102 Michael Fabricant: You said just now in answer to Chris Bryant that you would find it helpful if substances were made prohibited substances and then the moment you detect an element of this prohibited substance, or molecule I suppose I should say, then you know that the person has committed an offence. My first question is somewhat related to Chris Bryant's earlier questions regarding medicines. Is it possible for the body to metabolise in any way a prohibited substance through a combination of quite innocent substances that somebody might be taking?

Professor Cowan: We would normally talk about a diagnostic metabolite to make just that distinction that I think you are implying. Theoretically, we can break everything down to carbon dioxide, but of course you cannot penalise someone for having carbon dioxide coming out of their body, so what we have to do is to make sure that these metabolites that we detect do actually link back to a prohibited substance. They have to be quite specific.

Q103 Chairman: If I could just interrupt at that point, I have raised this before and I am not at all clear about this, so perhaps you could clarify it. If anybody can clarify it, you can. In what circumstances is either a controlled or a prohibited substance something which ought to be allowed? I will give you a personal example. When I had very severe back trouble, I was prescribed Coproxamol by my doctor. My condition then deteriorated and I went into hospital and took the Coproxamol with me. It was confiscated in the hospital on the grounds that it was a controlled drug and I could not have it. My doctor then told me to give it back again. When there is a dispute in that way, what is the appropriate ruling on, say, Coproxamol?

Professor Cowan: Again I experienced a case where a competitor had had a colic and had been hospitalised and was given pethidine as a prohibited painkiller. This was not in the public domain because in my mind the case was dealt with quite properly. The person was not competing and they had had the medication needed for their wellbeing and the sport quite appropriately said, "Yes, we know this. It was declared". We found it in the sample, but no action was taken. Unfortunately those sort of cases do not get the same publicity as the more notorious ones.

Q104 Michael Fabricant: Just going back to my original question then, is it right to say then that, therefore, there can be examples of false positives because of this combining in the body of quite innocent substances?

Professor Cowan: We quite deliberately describe our findings as adverse findings when apparently a rule has been broken and we try to avoid this term "positive" just because of the connotation you are putting on it and we prefer positive to be, say, at the end of the hearing when an offence has been shown to have been committed. I suppose the contradiction is that there is a strict liability principle applied in sport where is it not our finding that says an offence has taken place? I suppose in simple terms that is the case and, not being legally qualified, I would not try to argue that one through. In practice, provided that the process is carried through in a sensible manner, then I am very comfortable with it. I am less comfortable because there are some inadequacies in the hearing process or there may be some other agendas that people are running, that sport anti-drug rules are misused, in my mind, to discipline a competitor, but I am not familiar with this thing of false positive, as you put it. To me, a false positive would be that we had made a mistake and we had misidentified something.

Q105 Michael Fabricant: How do you see yourself in the role as being a policeman? What I mean by that is this: Chris Bryant was asking you about recreational drugs and you said, "Okay, with regard to stimulants", and you mentioned cocaine, "there might be an example there, I guess, where somebody might perform better because they will take greater risks", but I presume in straightforward athletics cocaine would not have any particular advantage - correct me if I am wrong - because it is not going to give you better muscle performance and certainly a depressant, if that is the word for it, like cannabis, is probably going to un-enhance you, so is it your role, is it your committee's role actually to say, "Yes, this athlete, this sportsman has taken drugs for recreational use, which may be against the law, but actually does not affect their performance in any better way, so, therefore, they would not win unfairly"?

Professor Cowan: I think the first part of your question was asking me whether I have the role of a policeman. I do not like to think that. I think I like to help to protect sport and to help to protect athletes in general so that they do not get in the scenario where they have to take drugs in order to win. That is the sort of level playing field approach where I feel that our team can actually make a contribution. Police would be where we fell. We are on the penalty side only and I think our role is bigger than that. With respect to your more specific question, I have learnt over the years not to be too dogmatic, not to be too predictive about what an athlete might take. Often we have got it wrong. I remember when we found an anabolic steroid in a half marathon, and marathon runners look pretty slim, do they not, so why would they use that? Gradually we realised that some of the behavioural effect might be quite important. If you are too laid back to bother to win, you will not win and a drug like cocaine might just give you the push in order to be that much more aggressive and say, "I'm going to win today", and I mentioned earlier about cannabis in surfing.

Q106 Michael Fabricant: Yes, and was it not cocaine which gave you more of a stimulus?

Professor Cowan: Yes, but then with cannabis, because that would normally be a sedative, and maybe alcohol is quite a good analogy, you might be quite gregarious after taking some alcohol, as long as you do not take so much that you do not know what you are doing, but a small amount, I was taught, is the first state of anaesthesia and the first state of anaesthesia is when you lose your inhibitions.

Q107 Michael Fabricant: You mentioned earlier on the Medicines Act. Perhaps you could just state for the record and for my information whether anabolic steroids are banned under the Medicines Act.

Professor Cowan: They come under Schedule 4 of the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Q108 Michael Fabricant: And what does that mean?

Professor Cowan: It actually makes it a controlled drug which means that unauthorised possession is an offence. However, there is a let-out under the Act that if it is for your personal use and it is in a formulated product, then it is permissible to use that as your defence, so if the police found that you had a big sack full of anabolic steroids, the court would have to show that that is more than your personal needs and that might be a bit difficult to do.

Q109 Michael Fabricant: Do you think there is an argument to say that anabolic steroids really should only be prescribed by a doctor and unless you have a prescription, they should be illegal?

Professor Cowan: Yes, that is my view, not just because it is a controlled drug, but because it is controlled under the Medicines Act as a prescription-only medicine, that that is the legal scenario.

Q110 Michael Fabricant: And if that were the case, would that then prevent the sort of scenario that Chris Bryant described of these drugs being sold in gymnasia?

Professor Cowan: It is illegal for them to do that. It is going to be covert.

Q111 Michael Fabricant: Do you think there is an industry whereby there are people actually trying to determine how they can be one step ahead of people like you, producing drugs which will improve people's performance in sport, or is it far more random than that with just small shysters trying to sell the odd drug here and there?

Professor Cowan: We know that in the former East Germany, Jenapharm actually produced a preparation of testosterone and epitestosterone. The only reason for doing that, in my mind, would be to beat the sports test, so occasionally we do discover some examples where it does go closer to your description of an industry that is actually designed to beat the test. I think the majority of cases though are more hit and miss. It is opportunistic in some cases or once one has started going down the road of misusing drugs, you are starting to cheat and then you will get your source of supply or more than one source of supply and continue to take it. I suspect that is going to be more of your own volition rather than involving others.

Q112 Michael Fabricant: At the margin, is it difficult to decide what is a drug and what is a naturally occurring substance that one is simply supplementing? For example, you see these large tins on sale of, not collagen, I do not know what it is, but sort of protein that people take and anabolic steroids are not naturally occurring in the body and when one takes a supplement, as you have already described, that is illegal, but proteins of course occur in the body, so if you take a supplement of them, that is not illegal or is it? How do you make the decision?

Professor Cowan: I can see two parts to that question and I will first talk about substances that would be covered under the Medicines Act. Earlier when I described about the Dietary Supplements Health Education Act of the United States, the issue there was that under US legislation the Government there determined that if this is natural in the environment in some way, like Ma-Huang or ephedrine is the chemical contained in it, then it should be possible to sell that with more limited control by government and if we did not want too much government legislation, let people, they are adults, let them take what they want to take. Only recently has the US Government, and I have to be careful how I put this, but in my mind it is largely because of deaths which have occurred in sport by people taking large amounts of ephedrine that the US Government now are tightening up those controls. In this country, substances which might come through as dietary supplements are controlled by the Medicines Control Agency and the MCA have made a number of determinations where they have written to dietary supplement manufacturers and said, "Look, in our view, what you are selling here is a medicine, and the message is that you cannot do that". The second part, as I understand it, is how does one decide what is controlled and what is not, and for that the World Anti-Doping Agency have actually written a protocol of the different characteristics that they wish to consider before they added a substance to their list. The one that is uppermost in my mind is harmful when misused, but one has to be careful about that because everything could be a poison. For example, you can drown yourself in water and yet you need water to live, so there is some difficulty in that decision-making and that is something we are quite used to in society. After all, Arthur Conan Doyle smoked opium and at that time that was permissible in society, but now you cannot smoke opium.

Q113 Michael Fabricant: And Queen Victoria took laudanum and laudanum of course was heroin.

Professor Cowan: I could not possibly comment.

Q114 Michael Fabricant: Your prime role of course is in the detection of these drugs. Do you provide an input into these organisations which actually determine whether a drug is legal or not? Do you make recommendations?

Professor Cowan: Well, internationally I have had the privilege to serve on a number of those committees and at that time, yes, I will make comment along that line because my background is in pharmacy and part of my work is actually to know something about drugs.

Q115 Michael Fabricant: Are there any protocols which you believe are leaving out certain drugs which ought to be included or, to put it another way, are there some drugs which are included in the protocols as being banned which you think should be legal?

Professor Cowan: Specifically at the moment, the World Anti-Doping Agency have decided to permit caffeine again and one of the ephedrines. My concern about those is whether that will then increase the overuse - and I will be careful not to call it "misuse" since it is allowed now - and whether people now will take larger amounts of caffeine in sport than when it was controlled and whether they will take larger amounts of these ephedrines than when they were controlled. The World Anti-Doping Agency have now put in a monitoring programme to see whether that does happen or not, so at least we now have that better evidence-based system.

Q116 Michael Fabricant: Going back to my earlier question about false positives, did they remove caffeine because people were drinking too many cups of coffee and purely by accident it tipped over the edge and, therefore, it was beyond the permitted minimum or was there another reason why they took caffeine off?

Professor Cowan: I think I just about know enough about the law to answer that, that intent is not one of the requirements to show a strict liability offence to have been proven, so I guess it is sort of tough in that if you have taken too strong a coffee, then it might be a bit of bad luck. Scientifically, we cannot show intent in any of our tests. We do not have the means of doing that and powers at the present time do not have to make that determination. I think if they had to in the same way as they might, say, in a criminal law offence, knowingly being in unauthorised possession of a controlled drug, then the court would have to show not only that you had the white powder in your possession, but that you knew it was a controlled drug. For that, the police have powers of stop and search and of actually interrogating, interviewing witnesses. We do not have that same approach in sport and I would not suggest we would wish to have it. The other side of the coin then is that we have a strict liability offence because we do not have the means to go to these other steps. I would like just to make another comment about caffeine because that is quite an interesting substance. Most people convert it in the body very rapidly, so a very small percentage comes out in a urine sample. People have said to me, "Well, they went over the limit even though they took a normal amount of caffeine", and my response to that is, "But they had more in their body at the time because they were not metabolising so much. They were getting more benefit from it. There was more stimulant effect". In terms of cheating, if I say, "I went off the blocks early in a race - was I cheating?" Technically, I broke the rules, the starter's gun would be fired again and I would be called back again. I think the problem with drugs in sport is this other connotation, that it is not just the cheating bit, but they are a drug misuser and we are not showing that in our drug tests. A one-off occurrence of someone going over the caffeine limit means that they cheated at the time that was found.

Q117 Alan Keen: It has been fascinating, listening to you as an expert in your field, but you must get frustrated sometimes about the whole structure and the administration of drug-testing. Would you like to tell us about the thoughts you have sometimes about what you would like to do if you were, for instance, a drug tsar overall of sport? How would you change the present system?

Professor Cowan: Well, I have to keep reminding myself that we need to consult the athletes as well. They are the ones who are suffering the problems if drug misuse is rampant in sport. Because the drugs can have possible harmful side-effects and that is one of the key reasons why many of these substances are prohibited, then you can imagine that if we allowed everyone to take drugs, there would be somebody saying, "I don't want to have to take drugs", and there are a number of athletes out there, saying, "I don't want to have to take drugs. Look, you must do your job properly to stop that situation". That is usually the driving force that keeps me going in there and if athletes say, "We want to take drugs. We want to have the right to do what we want", I would say, "Okay, I will move over to an area where people need what we can do", but I know that athletes do want us actually to do it and they get frustrated because we are not doing it right, not well enough yet and we need to do more for them. That is how I then deal with my frustration and I then go back and say, "Well, the deaths are not quite as common as we used to have". I think what we are doing is better than nothing, but I would like many things to move forward a lot more rapidly. I am getting more impatient as I get older.

Q118 Alan Keen: Do you think there should be much more co-ordination of the drugs policy in sport? Is this the sort of thing that we can recommend? Whether people will take notice of it is another thing, but it is an opportunity for people like you to put your views forward.

Professor Cowan: My feeling is that the things which would give the biggest advances at present would be if we had better hearing systems, that we had things like rules of evidence. If I have to give evidence in a Crown court, a criminal court or a civil court, I know that there are rules of evidence, that there are certain ways that a case will be heard, everybody knows that and I think that is very helpful. In too many sports hearings, and I am talking internationally now as well as nationally, I have been in cases where I have had four lawyers trying to ask me questions at the same time and sometimes you feel it is just like a free-for-all rather than a proper hearing of a case. Now, that is an extreme situation, I should say, because most cases are done in a proper manner, but that is a process which I would like to see tightened up somewhat and I think that would be the quickest and the cheapest benefit if we can get national and international agreement on how we would do that.

Q119 Alan Keen: Are there any technical reasons why all sport cannot be tackled under the same banner or should separate sports be looked at completely separately from others? Should there be one body?

Professor Cowan: I think there are some differences between the sports and I know people in cycling say to me, "We are competing all year round. We do not have an off season and an on season, so please don't simply say we are going to have out of competition the same way as others because we are always liable for testing all year round". The World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited list does recognise that different substances are controlled in different sports, so there are some small differences, but otherwise I think just the mere fact that often a competitor goes from one sport to another, that during their sporting career, they may change sports, therefore, I think there is a lot of reason to say that we should have some more uniformity between the different governing bodies of different sports.

Q120 Chairman: Thank you very much. Could I say, Professor Cowan, that this session, in my view, has done credit to the whole select committee system. The way in which you have responded to questions and indeed the questions which have been put have given us a very valuable period and I am most grateful to you.

Professor Cowan: Thank you.

Witnesses: Mr Charles Woodhouse, Chairman, Mr Jon Siddall, Director, Mr Peter Leaver QC, Member, SDRP Panel of Arbitrators, and Ms Alison Faiers, Case Officer, The Sports Dispute Resolution Panel, examined.

Chairman: Lady and Gentlemen, I would like to welcome you here this morning.

Michael Fabricant: I know you were here listening to the evidence Professor Cowan was just giving and I am particularly interested in the whole relationship between an illicit drug being found and the idea of there being a guilty intent by the athlete to take that drug, which I believe was one of the issues that Professor Cowan was making. I wonder if you could explain your role in this. You are looking at me blankly.

Q121 Chairman: Most people do, Michael!

Mr Woodhouse: The Sports Dispute Resolution Panel is a service to provide effective and fair resolution, including an independent tribunal service, but that tribunal must find matters on the basis of the rules of the respective body, which will now be the World Anti-Doping Agency. It is a strict liability issue at the moment, but there are big advances in the new Code because they are now looking at no fault and no decision, so it is slightly widening it up. Hitherto, it has been on a strict liability matter and that has caused quite key issues and some challenges in the courts on which I think Peter Leaver would be better able to answer.

Mr Leaver: I think you start from the position that it is only the athletes who know what goes into their bodies, so they have to be responsible. One of the questions which was asked of Professor Cowan was about the information that the athletes give. When they are selected for testing, they have an opportunity on the form which they have to sign when their sample is being provided to state what drugs they have taken within the last sometimes 24 hours, sometimes 48 hours, sometimes 72 hours, so they do have that opportunity and that responsibility to say what it is that they have taken. They also have, certainly in the sports with which I have been associated and which I have seen at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, a great deal of education about the drugs and the prohibited list. Can I just make this point: that what we are talking about is substances that are on the prohibited list, prohibited substances in other words, which are nowadays put on the list by WADA. It is not a question of whether these prohibited substances are performance-enhancing or not; the fact is that they are prohibited and that is the breach of the rules. I personally do not like calling it a doping offence, but I prefer to call it a breach of the doping rules. The reason I do not like calling it a doping offence is because it has too many connotations with the criminal law. It is a breach o the rules of the sport and it does not really matter whether it is performance-enhancing or not; it is a breach of the rules and that is the reason that athletes are disciplined, because they have broken the rules. I do not know whether that is an answer to your question or even a partial answer.

Q122 Michael Fabricant: Yes, that is helpful. That is the easy one, is it not, the prohibited list? As Professor Cowan said, that makes his life easy because you just detect the molecule, it is there and, therefore, a rule has been broken, assuming of course that somehow or other the product has not been self-metabolised or whatever. I wanted really to probe the whole issue of what view you take about those who say, "Well, somehow this has got into my body by accident or by a combination of things I have ingested", and also to get beyond the issue of the easy one, the prohibited issue, to the one where you are allowed to take a certain amount. Earlier on we heard about caffeine and we know that has now been taken off, but caffeine is a good example because previously you were allowed to have some caffeine in your body and then beyond a certain amount it became unlawful or a breach of the rules. How do you get round that sort of problem?

Mr Leaver: Well, I do not really see it as a case of getting round it, as far as I am concerned, because what happens when I am involved in one of these cases is that the athlete has given a sample, the sample has been analysed and what has been shown on the analysis is that there is a prohibited substance in the athlete's body. Now, if that prohibited substance is found in the course of a competition, then inevitably that athlete has got to be disqualified from that competition. Different issues may arise about whether or not there should be a suspension from competition in the future as a result of that prohibited test. My own personal view is that there should be a limited scope and a limited scope only for saying that there should not be a mandatory penalty in such circumstances because it is a very slippery slope. I know from my own experience after the last Winter Olympics where I was on the panel in Salt Lake City the lengths to which athletes will go. I heard a case with a couple of colleagues after the Games of some Russian cross-country skiers. They had been taking a perfectly legitimate drug, a drug which had been designed for people who suffered with anaemia, but it was discovered that this was a drug which would increase the production of red blood cells and, therefore, increase their endurance. There are no lengths, in my experience of sitting on these tribunals, to which athletes, certainly elite athletes, are not prepared to go to improve their performance. It may only improve their performance by a few seconds, but in a cross-country skiing race, those few seconds could be the difference between a gold medal, a silver medal, a bronze medal and no medal at all. I think if there is to be any scope for mitigating the penalty, it has got to be pretty limited because I go back to what I started with, that it is only the athletes who know what they have put into their bodies.

Q123 Michael Fabricant: It is interesting listening to this because it reminds me of the argument about whether there should be jury trials or trials with a tribunal or a magistrate because, through your experience, you seem rather cynical about the motives of those athletes who do take drugs. I still wonder whether maybe I am being the layman here and maybe I am always seeing the other side of the story and giving the benefit of the doubt, but do you not think that it is possible for an athlete unwittingly to ingest something which then is detected as being illegal?

Mr Leaver: I suppose it is possible, almost anything is possible. You start from the position most athletes do not take drugs. When I sit on the tribunal I am dealing with one of the athletes who has taken drugs, or it is said has taken drugs. It is up to the prosecuting authority then to prove the case but it is said they have taken drugs, and if we find they have taken drugs then they have sanctions imposed upon them, but most athletes do not take drugs. Is it possible to take drugs unwittingly? Of course, it is possible to take prohibitive substances unwittingly, but certainly at the top levels of most sports they have enough education about the dangers of taking substances that they should not do it, and they certainly should not do it without taking medical advice. There was quite a high profile case involving an athlete from this country where that may well have been one of the problems from which he suffered. Again going back to the sort of cases that are dealt with at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, there was one athlete in Salt Lake City who took 31 different food substances every day of his life in order to bulk up his body, to enhance his strength, so he as the pusher on the bob sleigh team might be able to gain by reason of that enhanced body strength half a second. That is what the authorities are up against.

Q124 Michael Fabricant: Were those food substances illegal?

Mr Leaver: They were illegal. It was like a man standing in the middle of a railway line with an express train bearing down on him. He just did not know, he did not care, he was just trying to bulk up his body, and that was it.

Michael Fabricant: I think that is cut-and-dried, Chairman. Thank you.

Q125 Derek Wyatt: Good morning. Did I just hear you say this was a confidential service? It is not in the public domain what you do?

Mr Leaver: Yes, it is in the public domain.

Q126 Derek Wyatt: All your rulings go into the public domain?

Mr Leaver: The Court of Arbitration for Sport publishes its decisions. There are two volumes of the decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport judgments.

Q127 Derek Wyatt: The Court of Arbitration?

Mr Leaver: That is the Court of Arbitration.

Q128 Derek Wyatt: That is not SDRP?

Mr Leaver: That is not SDRP.

Mr Siddall: In relation to the Sports Dispute Resolution Panel there is provision for decisions to be in the public domain, certainly at appeal level.

Q129 Derek Wyatt: So it is a given or it is not a given?

Mr Siddall: It is not automatic in all circumstances.

Q130 Derek Wyatt: Because?

Mr Siddall: If the parties were to make representations to keep it within the private domain, it would be considered by the tribunal, but the expectation is that decisions would arrive in the public domain, in much the same way as CAS. We are very much modelled on CAS in that respect. Certainly over a period of time, accepting that CAS is further advanced in its evolution, the custom and practice is automatic in that in appeal matters the decisions of the cases are always published, when one is talking about disciplinary appeal type cases. It is different if one is looking at a commercial arbitration situation.

Q131 Derek Wyatt: You do not feel compromised that it is not an absolute given that it is in the public domain?

Mr Siddall: We certainly have not encountered a difficulty at the moment. There is an expectation the decision taken will be in the public domain.

Q132 Derek Wyatt: Are you saying at the same time that every case you have dealt with has gone into the public domain?

Mr Siddall: We have not yet, and I think this is simply a reflection of the fact we are only a short period into our evolution, got into a position of as a matter of course reporting into the public domain, but there has not been a policy decision that says we will not do that.

Q133 Derek Wyatt: Do you understanding the apprehension I would have if it is not in the public domain? To get drugs sorted, there has to be absolute transparency once-and-for-all, we cannot mess about here. Who are your trustees or who decides the way you deal with your business? Who makes the decision that it may or may not go into the public domain?

Mr Siddall: We have a set of arbitration rules.

Q134 Derek Wyatt: Who made those up?

Mr Siddall: They are put together and approved by our board. Our independent board of directors ultimately approved those.

Mr Woodhouse: I think one should distinguish between doping cases, which must and ought to be in the public domain, and an awful lot of the work we do which is eligibility, selection and other types of dispute, and they are commercial disputes, especially if it is an arbitration, which can and should be confidential because it is a matter of agreement between the parties.

Q135 Derek Wyatt: Give me an example of that side of the equation where you could justify it going into the public domain, without mentioning who it is? Give us an illustration of what would make you not put anything in the public domain?

Mr Woodhouse: We do report the summary of decisions but sometimes not the names. Doping is distinguished from all the other things we do - we do not operate in only one discrete area - and there I fully accept in practice it must go into the public domain.

Q136 Derek Wyatt: Answer my question; give me an example of something you would not put in the public domain?

Mr Woodhouse: A commercial dispute under a sponsorship contract where the parties elect to have arbitration and elect to user SDRP to nominate one of our panels to handle that dispute. That might be a matter of contractual confidentiality for the parties and we are not talking at all about doping in that context.

Q137 Derek Wyatt: I still do not understand what that would be. If I could try and give you an illustration, you can tell me no and give me an illustration back: a sponsor sponsors a football match or a cricket match to have something on television, and finds that although they paid £5 million for something in fact they did not get what they were promised, so they come to you and say, "This is unreasonable". Is that what you are telling me?

Mr Woodhouse: Yes, that is an arbitration dispute.

Q138 Derek Wyatt: And that is the sort of arbitration dispute you deal with?

Mr Woodhouse: If it is put in context, yes, it is quite possible we would be the chosen body because of our expertise in sport and the relevant area.

Q139 Derek Wyatt: How many cases do you deal with a year?

Mr Siddall: We have dealt with on average between 20 and 35 cases a year over our first four year period, so we are now in a position where we have done something over 100. That has embraced the full range of our areas of work: arbitration, mediation, appeals and also our appointing work. It is important to recognise that in addition to dealing with cases under our own arbitration and mediation rules, we also act as an appointing body to governing bodies, for example to appoint a legally qualified chair to chair a tribunal within a given sport. That has been a service which I think has been quite beneficial to the governing bodies, and that is one aspect of achieving the balance of how to deal with doping cases which is up for discussion and review as to where the ultimate responsibility would lie. We are happy to approach it in either fashion.

Q140 Derek Wyatt: Could an English cricketer who might be selected for Zimbabwe come to you to say, "This is against my moral or whatever reasons, I do not wish to go", even though he was contracted and obligated to go? Would he use you as a source to say, "How do I get out of this"?

Mr Woodhouse: That would be for agreement between the bodies. We have no standing, no status, in any dispute unless by consent of both the governing body and the individual. If both parties said to us, "Yes, we want an independent, effective, value for money resolution speedily", they might indeed come to us because we are trusted and we have panels which are independent and experts - people like Peter Leaver - which would resolve it and it is a more effective way than going to the courts.

Mr Leaver: If he were contracted, he would presumably have a contract with the England and Wales Cricket Board, and it would depend on what were the provisions of that contract in relation to dispute resolution as to whether or not he could go to the SDRP.

Q141 Derek Wyatt: Why has not the ECB used either you or Resolve (?) over Zimbabwe? It is a whole mess, is it not? It is complete madness that is going on at the moment. Why has not the ECB used you and/or Resolve (?), especially with the ICC debate?

Mr Woodhouse: They could have used us if they had so chosen. Indeed we might be able to demonstrate not only effectiveness but cost effectiveness and speed. This is an evolving service which has now been established and trusted in sport.

Mr Siddall: I think that is fair to say. I hope this answers your question, on an increasing basis a very large number of sports are now coming to the SDRP when in one form or another they wish to take advantage of the SDRP service. That is an evolving process, we did not start from the position where all governing bodies chose to use us in every form, but increasingly our reputation has been established over the four years we have been running and we are now becoming well recognised as the body to whom organisations should turn, dealing with the very sort of dispute you have in mind.

Q142 Chris Bryant: You talk about being an evolving service and there has been some suggestion that you should take on a much bigger role in terms of doping. Do you want to say anything about that?

Mr Woodhouse: As the independent tribunal service, because that clearly has to be very separate from results management and whatever, we are well-placed to provide that truly independent service with the right panels of independent chairpersons or whatever, legally qualified, and also persons expert in sports so they understand both sides of it. So, yes, that service already exists but it is likely to be a service which would be of advantage to sport and wanted by sport.

Q143 Chris Bryant: Do you think there is a danger in the present situation where those who are most interested in there not being very many negative adjudications or findings there have been prohibitive substances in athletes or sportsmen and women, namely the organisations that run sport, are still the people who hold the baby as it were in terms of determining the process? Do you think there is a contradiction in terms in that?

Mr Siddall: I am certainly not aware of any evidence of sports adopting that attitude in order to defend their position; quite the contrary. For the large part I think organisations of sports governing bodies are very much committed to playing their part. I think the position is changing, and certainly as has been mentioned today with the introduction of the World Anti-Doping Code there is in effect no choice for the governing bodies, by virtue of the WADA Code being adopted worldwide by the international federations or the sports governing bodies in turn in conjunction with the national anti-doping organisation, to adopt an effective framework which meets that requirement. The way I would choose to look at it is more a case of the governing bodies seeking guidance and assistance in the task of putting that framework in place. I certainly do not see evidence of them deliberately in a sense looking to avoid responsibility. They may have different views as to how that responsibility should be played.

Q144 Chris Bryant: But there is a conflict of interest, is there not? Whether there is proof that has led to a problem or not is always going to be difficult because you are proving a negative, but there is inherently at least philosophically a conflict of interest.

Mr Siddall: I am sorry in what context?

Q145 Chris Bryant: In both being interested, having a commercial and financial interest in your sport having an image as a clean sport, and in trying to police a system which might throw up more and more people if you did it effectively, tightly and robustly who are dodging the system.

Ms Faiers: I think the function of a governing body though ultimately is to regulate and control the sport and be responsible for the sport, so whilst you could see competing interests in a wide range of what a governing body undertakes, fundamentally they are responsible for controlling that sport and governing the sport in the UK, so therefore there could be perceived a conflict of interest but realistically that is their function and therefore they have to weigh up the balances. As Jon says, there is no evidence which suggests that anybody has ever considered the option of covering up, shall we say, problems in their sport, because ultimately the fundamental reason for their existence is not just to promote the positive benefits of their sport, it is to control their sport in every way that is required.

Q146 Chris Bryant: In some of the sports which are big businesses, surely the commercial interests are very, very significant?

Ms Faiers: They are very significant but they are no less significant to the governing body as a whole than any of their other interests.

Q147 Chris Bryant: I would suggest to you they might be more significant than many other interests.

Mr Siddall: There is surely a distinction to be drawn between the overriding responsibilities that the sports bodies will have to their sport and balancing that against the recognition of what they must put in place in one form of another is a resolute, independent, effective, fair framework to consider matters. What I was indicating, and I do not profess to know all the situations there are, I am not aware of instances where governing bodies have been going out of their way to make sure cases would never come anywhere near. What we are concerned with is ensuring and helping the governing bodies and the national anti-doping organisation putting in place a framework which everybody will have confidence in, so when cases arrive they are dealt with on a speedy, independent, effective and fair basis. It seems to us that that is an area in which the athletes who are coming before a process, the athletes who are not coming before a process but want their sport to be clean and want to feel it is dealt with in the right way, and the governing bodies who are in the middle of the equation in any event, all have an expressed interest in making sure that framework is available. That is what we believe is developing, to the extent it has not done already, and that is where we believe SDRP can provide a very valuable service.

Q148 Chris Bryant: In athletics you run your 100 metres, you win or you do not win, and a random sample of athletes are immediately taken away to have their samples taken. In football it seems that sometimes you will be told, "You have to come in for a testing in 24 or 48 hours' time." I may be wrong because I see there is a gentleman who is shaking his head in the background. From what we have heard in the last evidence which was given to us, that is a considerable period of time to, as it were, clean yourself out.

Mr Leaver: I have never heard of a system of testing like that. You either have on-the-spot testing after the event or random testing which involves the testers turning up on the day and carrying out the test on the day. What you do not do is say, "I am going to turn up in 24 hours."

Q149 Chris Bryant: How then can a footballer not turn up for a test?

Mr Leaver: He cannot, is the short answer.

Q150 Chris Bryant: They have clearly. Unless the newspapers have told complete and utter lies, there have clearly been cases where footballers have failed to turn up for a test they were supposed to turn up for, and they therefore clearly knew beforehand.

Mr Woodhouse: That is an offence. Can I go back? You talked earlier with Professor Cowan about the UK position, and I think we pioneered this no-notice, random, out of competition testing. I was actually involved with the BAB, the predecessor governing body of British athletics, and this country was probably the first in the early 1980s to have random, no-notice, out of competition testing. Any athlete eligible for international competition was on a register and he or she consented to this random system. It is long established in this country and it is the only effective method - random, no-notice testing.

Q151 Chris Bryant: I would have thought that was the case, that is why I do not understand the system whereby a footballer can be told, "You have to turn up at such-and-such a time, at such-and-such a place for a test" because that is clearly advanced noticed.

Ms Faiers: It is an interpretation of a situation basically. A footballer would be notified at the start of the training session he is to be tested at the end of the training session. If he failed to be tested at the end of the training session, that is the situation where he has failed to turn up for the test. In the same way, in athletics, you could be notified randomly at a competition that you are going to be tested. You may not be tested there and then because you may be going off to compete, for example, throwing the javelin, so you wait until you have completed your sporting discipline before you are actually tested.

Q152 Chris Bryant: So that is what happened in the Rio Ferdinand case? He was there at the beginning of the training session and was told at the beginning of the training session he had to be there at the end?

Ms Faiers: I was not there but that is how the situation normally arises.

Mr Leaver: I suspect it was not at the beginning of the training session. What normally happens on these occasions is that the testers turn up, they draw the names of those who are going to be tested at random, and the particular people who are going to be tested are told when they have finished their morning training, or whatever it is, they are going to be tested, and they should then go immediately to give their sample.

Q153 Chris Bryant: Professor Cowan's point was that you should be accompanied from the moment you ---

Mr Leaver: Absolutely. I will give you a concrete example of that. Just yesterday in fact I signed out an award from the Court of Arbitration for Sport about a discus thrower who had been selected for random testing. The testers turned up at a gymnasium and they were meant to be testing three or four of the athletes. One of them said, "I just have another 20 minutes to go, will it be all right if I finish my training?" The tester said, "Yes, but we are going to have to stay with you until such time as you provide your test." That is the way it operates properly.

Q154 Chris Bryant: Can I ask a very different question which is about the medicinal drugs issue which I raised earlier with Professor Cowan? You said earlier, Mr Leaver, that it is only the athletes who know what goes into their bodies, but obviously that implies a supposition about what "knowing" means; you might unwittingly take something presuming it to be a medicinal drug which did not have any prohibitive substances in it. It also presumes you should be the only person, whereas there might be other people involved such as coaches and trainers and the professional body with which you are working such as a club.

Mr Leaver: You will be the person who knows what goes into your body. That is one of the reasons why on the form, when you provide a sample, you are supposed to say what it is you have taken or had administered. Whether it is Night Nurse or cough mixture or whatever, you are meant to put that on the form.

Q155 Chris Bryant: Right. The point at which you become a professional, a high performance athlete who is going to be subject to doping regulations and so on, as opposed to the moment when you were just an amateur person who was running in the London Marathon every year, is a continuum, there may not be a sudden moment at which you realise you have gone from A to B. Do you think there is room for further help in the marketing of medicinal products?

Mr Leaver: I think there is enormous room for education, yes. Some international federations are very good at educating athletes, some are absolutely dreadful, they do not even begin to scratch the surface. A lot of education is needed in all sorts of areas of life, but this is certainly one of them where education is I think a high priority.

Q156 Chris Bryant: Do you think the pharmaceutical industry could do more?

Ms Faiers: Professor Cowan made the point that the BNF now provide guidelines for doctors. I think there is a second publication which is also accessed by the medical profession which, under the requirements of the Medicines Act, et cetera, requires certain things to be established. There is certainly a provision under certain parts of the legislation to increase that to say they would have to state whether this would be wide of compliance, for example, and I do not think that is beyond the realms of consideration. It is good to know the BNF already do that with their listings.

Q157 Chris Bryant: What about the idea of some kind of stamp which says, "This has no WADA-prohibited substances in it"?

Mr Leaver: Terribly easy to put on, are they not? One of the problems is a lot of the athletes buy things on the internet nowadays from places outside this country.

Q158 Chris Bryant: Do you think the law should be changed on that?

Mr Leaver: I think it creates problems certainly. There are many athletes who have done that who have found they are taking substances which are prohibited, they usually come out with the defence in those circumstances that it is contaminated, but they are the ones who have gone out to buy it in the first place.

Mr Woodhouse: What WADA are working on, which is very helpful I think, is to adopt an international standard for the process of granting therapeutic use exemptions. In other words, athletes who use medically-prescribed prohibited substances may be subject to sanctioning unless they have previously obtained a therapeutic use exemption. This is sensible, constructive stuff in the WADA Code. When that happens and it is harmonised, we will be in a safer position than the accidental use perhaps of something medically-prescribed which is on the list. I quite like that and I look forward to WADA developing that work.

Q159 Chris Bryant: Taurine? It is just a factual question, I guess, I do not know what the situation is as far as taurine is concerned. France and certain states in the United States of America have taken a different attitude from Britain as to whether you should be allowed to buy it at all.

Mr Woodhouse: I am not an expert, I do not know.

Mr Leaver: I am sorry?

Q160 Chris Bryant: Taurine. Red Bull and all those other drinks.

Mr Leaver: I do not know enough about what the ingredients of those things are, but that is a matter for domestic legislation as much as anything else. WADA can only go so far, international treaty can only go so far in saying what is permitted and what is not permitted. If a particular country wants to say, "We don't mind our inhabitants taking cocaine", we cannot stop it when they are there. There are some drugs which are available over the counter in Europe which are not available over the counter here but are only available on prescription, and you will always get those divergences and discrepancies.

Q161 Charles Hendry: Chairman, can I start off by picking up on something which Mr Bryant was asking about. The press coverage of the Rio Ferdinand issue suggested he failed to turn up for a test. From what you are saying he did not fail to turn up, he deliberately absented himself from a training session having been told he would be tested afterwards. Is that a correct interpretation?

Mr Siddall: No, it is not a correct interpretation.

Q162 Charles Hendry: It is rather different, is it?

Mr Siddall: For the record, it is absolutely not the case of what we are saying.

Q163 Charles Hendry: In that case, I am not quite sure how we tie that in with your answers to Mr Bryant where you said that somebody was told at the end of his training session, "You will be tested", whereas the press speculation about Rio Ferdinand was he was told, "At this time you should turn up" and he did not.

Mr Leaver: The breach of the rules is failing to provide a sample when you have been required to take one. Whether that is done deliberately or not is not the test for the breach of the rules. The breach is the failure to provide the sample. I do not know enough about the case but you refer to press speculation, it may well just be that. What we do know is that he was told that he was to provide a sample, he had been selected for random testing, and he did not provide a sample. That is the breach of the rules, the failure to provide the sample. Everything else, unless you know all the facts of the case, is speculation.

Q164 Charles Hendry: Okay. We live in a world of speculation. In your submission to us at 2.5, your principal observations are as follows: "Differences in size and recourse - There is a significant difference in the size and resource of the sports governing bodies coming within the Drug-Free Sport programme. This inevitably leads to a difference of approach in managing doping cases which can lead in turn to inconsistency." Are you saying it does lead to inconsistency or it might lead to inconsistency, and what is the nature of that inconsistency if it has occurred?

Mr Siddall: What we mean by that is we are not saying it necessarily has led to inconsistency, I think it is more an inconsistency of approach not inconsistency of outcome. What we were simply looking to recognise was the size and scope of the procedure which might be followed in a major governing body and contrasting that with a smaller governing body, perhaps with little or no experience of dealing with doping cases, insofar as the way they would go about the process and the way the hearing might be conducted, the availability of experts or not as the case may be, the availability of representation of one or both sides. So it was simply contrasting the likely scope and nature of the hearing rather than suggesting there would be automatically an inconsistent outcome.

Q165 Charles Hendry: If it is possible to have an inconsistent approach which does not lead to an inconsistent outcome, and if the outcome is the same in any case, does it matter they might have had a different approach and how they went about it?

Mr Siddall: I think that is a fair assessment. What one is looking for is a reasonable and fair outcome, and I think there is a recognition in most quarters that there is a difference between the size of governing bodies, assuming for one moment they continue to play an active role within the scheme of things, and that may necessarily on grounds of resource and other considerations lead to a slightly different approach. As long as they reach an outcome which is seen to be in compliance with the Code and in compliance with the UK policy and in compliance with the international regulations, and it is a process which has the confidence of those involved, most importantly the athletes, it does not seem to us to be the case that there has to be one absolute procedure that applies irrespective. Clearly what has to apply is adherence to certain fundamental principles in any process which is put forward.

Mr Woodhouse: What is important is harmonisation of the rules right across sport. In the old days, there were even difficulties with the national federations, UK Athletics or its predecessor bodies, because they had different rules from the international athletics federation, let alone other sports. When you have harmonisation of sanctions, rules and whatever right across the board it is going to be, hopefully, a much better system.

Mr Leaver: This is not just a UK phenomenon. International federations are of different sizes, different shapes, different abilities, and that is one of the reasons why having the WADA Code which the IOC says must be now incorporated into all of your rules is a great step forward. It would be a great help I think if a similar sort of approach were taken in this country.

Q166 Charles Hendry: Which countries outside the UK would you think have the most effective anti-doping regimes, and what do they do differently from the approach we have in the United Kingdom?

Mr Leaver: From my experience the countries which are best at the moment are Canada, Australia and the United States since they set up USADA and took the drug testing away from the United States Olympic Committee. Those seem to me to be the most efficient and the best at the moment.

Q167 Charles Hendry: So it is taken away from the individual sports?

Mr Leaver: Yes.

Q168 Charles Hendry: Is that an independent body?

Mr Leaver: There are different models in different countries. Some of them are completely independent, some of them are not completely independent. From my point of view, I think what is important is that there should be transparency between the governing bodies and the authority which is responsible for the testing. There should be as much clear blue water as possible. From then on it is a question of speed and accuracy in getting the results analysed and disciplinary hearings taking place.

Q169 Charles Hendry: Would that be a general view shared across the panel?

Mr Woodhouse: Yes, separation of roles, clarity of roles, is absolutely fundamental. As long as that is clear, you then lead to the aim. We are all aiming to achieve a framework that is effective, fair, trusted, affordable and complies with the rules which are now being harmonised through WADA. How you get there is a different question, but the clarity of roles and distinguishing who does what is very important.

Q170 Charles Hendry: You would agree also that Canada, Australia and the United States are the role models?

Mr Woodhouse: I would not have said the USA before but since they have separated from the USOC, as David Cowan and Peter Leaver have just explained, they have got towards the goal.

Q171 Charles Hendry: Do you think there would be merit in Britain adopting the same approach, or are there reasons why you think it would be inappropriate here?

Mr Woodhouse: I think we want to see what we are trying to achieve; the end result. There are perfectly legitimate methods of reaching that end result, I do not think there is one simple panacea.

Mr Siddall: Our focus is very much on the hearings framework, from the results management side onwards, and, without wishing to repeat the points we have made, that is the key element for us, and we will work within the structure that is decided ultimately from a policy level. One observation I would make, which I think is an important one to note, is in the context of the tribunal framework which is evolving in Canada, which is not dissimilar from the one here, they recognise the value of all types of dispute being dealt with in a single framework. So, for example, the national dispute resolution in Canada is going to take within its remit doping cases but also other matters which might arise - discipline, selection and all types of issues. That is very much the viewpoint we have, that it is the overall area of dispute resolution which needs to be dealt with, accepting anti-doping is the most evident, obvious and very important area which has to be embraced within that.

Q172 Charles Hendry: On funding, is your funding and budget set in advance or is it funding which is provided according to the number of cases which you have to take on each year?

Mr Siddall: Our funding is made by way of grant from UK Sport, and that is currently done within a three year funding agreement subject to confirmation annually and that is reviewed annually. It is not specifically set against the number of cases which we might take on; I think there is a recognition that our role goes broader than simply being judged on the number of cases we have done. It is important to recognise also we see ourselves as a best practice organisation but clearly there is a link between the two, and that has been recognised within our current year's funding in that provision has been made to cover the potential cost of us having to manage more cases in an Olympic and Paralympic year.

Mr Leaver: The same sort of debate has taken place at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and, as a result of a case which went to the Swiss Federal Tribunal last year, there is now far clearer demarcation, blue water, between the funding of the court and what used to be the case. It used to be provided partly by the IOC, partly by the international federations, partly by the federations whose cases came to the court. There was certainly in my view a lack of comfort in a large part of the money being provided by the IOC and the court being seen as an IOC entity. Although the Swiss Federal Court did not find the system which was in place was offensive in any way, they said it could be made clearer, and it has now been made clearer, and I think that is an important fact to take into account when deciding how bodies should be set up in this country, that you do need that transparency, that clear blue water, between the decision-making body and the funders.

Mr Woodhouse: When SDRP was set up we tried to learn the lessons of CAS which, as Peter Leaver has just indicated, when it came through was not perceived to be a totally independent body -it was not to start with. I believe SDRP is a fully independent body, the board is not appointed by Government, by UK Sport, the membership is across sport - for sport by sport - we are not an athletes' body, a governing bodies' body, everyone is involved in the way it has been set up. I certainly feel we are truly independent in the way we are run.

Chairman: Gentlemen and lady, thank you very much indeed. Another very valuable session for which I thank you.

Witness: Mr David Sparkes, Chief Executive, British Swimming (ASFGB), examined.

Q173 Chairman: Mr Sparkes, grand finale. Thank you very much for coming.

Mr Sparkes: Hopefully. I just wondered why your colleagues were leaving as I was coming on and whether that was indicative!

Chairman: It is nothing to do with you, it is because of the ludicrous vote in the House of Commons earlier in this Parliament whereby we sit earlier on days like this and they have to go to ask questions and do other things. They would be much better occupied here. As I say, nothing personal whatsoever. Mr Wyatt?

Q174 Derek Wyatt: Mr Chairman, I am glad they went off because I approve of the changes. Mr Sparkes, the last time but one you came was when we did our one-day conference on swimming. Please pass on congratulations to the teams who have done so well in the World Championships and elsewhere. We did not do so well in Sydney, we hope to do well in Athens. My question is: you have been prepared to put, as it were, your name to the mast to say you value an independent drugs regime. Can you say why you do and why football does not, or why others do not?

Mr Sparkes: I come from a very simplistic point of view. My point of view is this, I think the public, for whatever reason, want to see fair play in sport. They want to see a level playing field, they want to see consistency, and when someone is found to be taking drugs they want to see consistency of penalty, they want to see fairness of process. What I see in other countries, and Canada has been referred to, is that consistency of process across sport; I see that fairness across sport. I do not see that in this country. To my mind it is that issue which is at the core of the concerns. Most athletes are quite content with providing samples, it is done in a very correct way and I am sure the samples are dealt with in a very appropriate and highly ethical way. The process which UK Sport manages is done in a good way, but the problems occur once we have an adverse finding; that is when the thing starts to break down. I think it is important that what we have is a consistent process from taking the sample to the conclusion of the hearing, and I do not see that in this country. It amazes me that the IOC can recognise the need to establish CAS, many nations around the world can see the necessity of establishing a process which is consistent and fair, and yet we cannot. It is perverse.

Q175 Derek Wyatt: But why can we not? Should we do more on our side? Is it something we should legislate for? What is it we need to do? Why was that terrible report which was commissioned by Sport England, or whoever it was, recently published, which almost answered the question the way it wanted, which was, "Don't have independence"? Independence is what we need.

Mr Sparkes: I believe the report missed the point completely. It does not address at all the independent report which was commissioned by UK Sport, it does not address the fundamental issue of what you do with adverse findings. Of course, governing bodies by their nature want to keep things to themselves, because then they can deal with them in-house, I am sure we are all like that, but I want more transparency, I want more openness in this area, so the public can start to feel a footballer will be treated the same as a swimmer, irrespective of how much they earn, and everyone be treated the same and every decision from whatever sport will be publicly known and publicly available. It might not sell as many newspapers but it will certainly, I believe, make my Dad much more comfortable with the process.

Q176 Derek Wyatt: Do not take this the wrong way, but it is much easier for you to make that statement because swimming is not on the back pages and front pages as much as soccer these days, and therefore you have agents, sponsors, clubs, lawyers, a whole barrage of people interfering. We I think on our side - and I hope I can speak for all of us around the table - welcome independence. Soccer is a world sport, you cannot name a second world sport sometimes, whether it is athletics or motor sport or whatever, but definitely soccer is the first sport, and therefore it has much more political caché and is able to lever in. So it is much easier for you to say that than the chief executive of the FA.

Mr Sparkes: Let's put this in perspective. One of the top ten earners in the world is Ian Thorpe. Ian Thorpe is one of the most incredibly rich athletes in the world. If he tested positive I guarantee you he would be on the front page of every newspaper. I would also argue that if it was discovered that one of my athletes who had been selected for the Olympic Games to go to Athens was tested positive, I am sure there would be considerable press interest in that. I do accept that we are not back page fodder all the time but we are of interest to the media from time to time, and I think any athlete who tests positive will always attract media attention. We have tried to manage those cases we have dealt with, and we have dealt with them in a proper way, we have been quite open and transparent, we have published the outcomes of the cases, they are there for everyone to see, both nationally and internationally, and we are as transparent as we can be.

Q177 Derek Wyatt: I have an interest in a sport called rugby union and they share your views but, for some reason, the Football Association does not. Why does one of the biggest not want an independent tester? What is there to hide here?

Mr Sparkes: I think there are two issues here, if I may, Chairman. I think there is the question of the independency of the doping agency which collects the sample and deals with that, and then there is the process which follows that which of itself is dealing with the situation. To my mind, that should be dealt with consistently. Can I make the point that if one of my swimmers failed to turn up for a doping test, they would be banned for two years unless they could show some exceptional cause. Two years. That is almost a mandatory sentence. That is the situation we have in swimming. Our rules fundamentally line up with WADA. The world, out there, is trying to rally round one set of rules. We should not be looking at differences in football, cricket, swimming or athletics, we should be rallying round one set of rules, and that means the less inconsistency we bring to the process the better because then we will start to get people to believe in the process and what we are trying to achieve, which is drug-free sport.

Q178 Derek Wyatt: Forgive my ignorance here, but does that mean the contract any of your senior swimmers have with you, or the contract they have with Sport England, whichever way it is, absolutely has a paragraph saying, "If you do not turn up, you will get a two-year suspension"? They absolutely know the rules, there is no grey area here?

Mr Sparkes: We have a very simple process: everyone from the age of 11 who comes into competitive swimming - that is not someone who goes swimming for fun - has to sign a piece of paper agreeing to make themselves available for doping control. We have a policy of doing doping control amongst our young athletes, because it is part of an education process, particularly the talented youngsters, so they do not find themselves at the Olympic Games suddenly faced with their first doping test, so they are used to the process. The next point is, when they turn 18, they get a birthday card from Adrian Moorhouse, and it says, "Now you are 18 it is not for your parents to sign, it is now for you to sign" and they actually sign up again. Every athlete signs up to our doping control and our doping regulations. When we change those regulations, as we are now, to line up with WADA, we consult with the athletes and say, "This is what we are proposing to put in place", and so they can respond in an appropriate way we pay for them to get independent legal advice, so they can go off to a lawyer as a group, talk to the lawyer and say, "Are they being fair with us?" We cannot do more than that. They can come back and say they do not like this and they wonder about that. The point I am making is, they know exactly what the rules are, and they know if they do not turn up to doping control in Sheffield at the Olympic trials it is two years.

Q179 Derek Wyatt: Has there been any evidence of drugs in UK swimming in the last 10 years?

Mr Sparkes: Yes.

Q180 Derek Wyatt: How many cases?

Mr Sparkes: We tend to deal with about two per year. I have to say, broadly speaking, they tend to be at the minor end of things. We recently dealt with an Iranian water polo player who played in London who had taken some drugs and he got a 12-month suspension. By the way, that case is publicly available on our website and on our international federation website, the case, the details, the outcome, the person.

Q181 Derek Wyatt: So if you hold these trenchant views, why do other chief executives of our British sports not hold them as well? Or do they?

Mr Sparkes: I do not know. Some of them do. I believe that there is a need to take out some of the mythology of this. It is fairly straightforward. We are dealing with cheats. At the end of the day that is what it is, it is a cheat. Why can we not deal with these people in a very open and honest way?

Q182 Derek Wyatt: You say your swimmers at 11 and 18 sign, what about the coaches?

Mr Sparkes: The coaches are also within our rules liable. If it can be proved that the coach provided the swimmer with the substance, the coach is actually liable to even more stringent disciplinary action. They themselves are members of our association and also sign up to our rules. We do not dope-test the coaches but the point I am making is they know they are liable, as are the sport scientists.

Q183 Derek Wyatt: You heard my question earlier about the drug food chain. Is there a legal reason why you cannot suspend the swimmer, the athlete and the coach? Is it because the coach legally would say, "Hey, I did not know, I shouldn't be suspended, you will cut my wages off"? Why can we not say, "These are the rules, if you are in the food chain it is not just the athlete, all of you are fined, and all of you go"?

Mr Sparkes: Can I give you a piece of information? Swimming believed they had a problem in terms of doping control. We agreed at world level - and I would say it was Great Britain, Australia, Canada and America who pushed it - that if a federation has four out-of-competition doping tests which are positive in any year, which are done by our international federation, the federation is suspended. So in effect, if we put that into reality, my swimmers are today competing in Dunkirk with the French nationals, if four of those swimmers were tested positive, we would not be going to the Olympic Games. I think that shows robustness by the governing body of the sport. With regard to the coach, the difficulty there is making the link. What they did do, when they did make the link, particularly I believe with a coach in China tied up with growth hormone problems which happened around the World Championships in Perth, that coach was also suspended. So it is making that link. I do not believe you can say that because they are athletes taking something the coach must have been involved, I think that is unfair, because athletes will use a range of coaches anyway.

Q184 Derek Wyatt: I know the FA wanted Rio Ferdinand suspended for two years and he only got eight months, you said two years a moment ago but actually the Iranian only got one year.

Mr Sparkes: Because he was taking a substance.

Q185 Derek Wyatt: Was it a cough mixture?

Mr Sparkes: I think it was cocaine, if I remember rightly.

Q186 Charles Hendry: What you are saying sounds very laudable but I have a question about the practicalities of it. What constitutes a fair penalty for the footballer earning £10,000 a week and a volley ball player? You clearly cannot have a fine which is relevant to both of them. Also, if you have a suspension, as far as the footballer is concerned you are costing him tens of thousands of pounds a week, but as far as the volley ball player is concerned they are going on with their existence. Also when you bring in the effect of sponsorship, clearly the loss of sponsorship for a football player can be dramatic whereas for the volley ball player it is not. So how can you in reality have a fair penalty?

Mr Sparkes: The world has signed up to one code - as incredible as that might seem, they have - and that code defines the penalty and it says that, for this you get this and for this you get that. The world said that is it across the world. The penalty of suspending Ian Thorpe for two years would be phenomenal for Ian Thorpe. The penalty of suspending one of the British swimmers in the Olympic team would be less financially impacting, but I would actually argue that, for both of them, it would be an enormous loss not to be able to compete for two years because what matters to an athlete is competing and winning. Whilst the money is very nice, that is what they really do it for, they compete to win. I believe that that matters as much to a footballer as it does to a swimmer. It is perhaps unfortunate in some respects that there is not as much money in swimming as there is in football but, to my mind, also built into the wider code is the opportunity for there to be financial penalties and it may be there that you can start to impose some levelling. However, the important thing is that the world has said that two years is a fair time - we used to have four years in swimming, so we have had to come down, we have had to compromise - to say that someone who has cheated should be away from sport. I do not think that is unreasonable at all. I think that is what the world signed up to. To my mind, it did not matter whether they came up with 12 months or three years. The world of sport has decided that is fair. Who am I to challenge that because that has been democratically decided? I was present when it was done where everybody said, "Yes, we will sign up to it."

Q187 Charles Hendry: If there is a world-wide agreement on what the suspension should be, where is the issue of there being different penalties in different sectors?

Mr Sparkes: Because, at the moment, we are faced with a situation here where we have a national doping agency which is UK Sport and there are arguments for whether it should be more independent than it is, but we are actually allowing the governing bodies of the sport to deal with the cases. What actually happens in some cases is that you find yourself in a very confrontational situation with lawyers who are there to get their clients off and get them back in the pool. So, it becomes a very confrontational and legalistic affair and what I am saying to you is that that is something which governing bodies will struggle with and they do and we do because it is an extremely confrontational situation. I believe our role as the governing body should be to support the athlete through this difficult period and this should be a matter for a hearing out there. So, I should be supporting the athlete and helping the athlete through that process.

Q188 Chairman: Regardless?

Mr Sparkes: Yes. Suddenly, someone says to you, "You have something in your urine that should not be there." Most athletes feel extremely vulnerable at that moment in time. Accidental or otherwise, it is there. They need help and guidance. To whom do they turn for help and guidance? With regard to the question of how some of these stories leak, I suspect it is because they turn to the media and they start helping them and guiding them, but I am suggesting that that could be the governing bodies' role if the case is dealt with out here by an independent agency because we have no part to play in it. I am currently in the middle of a, "dispute" is probably the wrong word, discussion over selection of the Olympic team of one swimmer. That is fine. I do not have to worry about that because that is being dealt with by an independent agency over here. So, I can help support the athlete through a difficult period when they found themselves not on the Olympic team.

Q189 Charles Hendry: Does that not give you exactly the same conflict that you were talking about earlier as being undesirable in that, on the one hand, you are there to maintain integrity of swimming and to stand up for that but, on the other hand, you are also there to represent the interests of the swimmer who is under accusation?

Mr Sparkes: If an independent agency says to me, "This swimmer is to be suspended for two years", I will suspend them. I merely take the decision and implement it. Let us take the Iranian water polo player who is on cocaine, I would now offer that player some help in being rehabilitated, perhaps trying to get them into some sort of drugs programme. I can be far more interventionist and far more act like a governing body. It is not my role to be an independent court for sport. I think that is the role of the SDRP. Why can other nations like Canada - and now Australia are going down this route - and Germany see the commonsense of this and we cannot?

Q190 Charles Hendry: At the end of the day, will not the swimmer or the accused sportsman or woman be doing all they can to clear their names? Even if it is an independent body, they are going to have lawyers acting on their behalf with so much riding on it. Trying to minimise the penalty that they might be facing is not going to change that aspect one iota.

Mr Sparkes: No, but it will make it very much more consistent. Whether it be a swimmer who is sat there, a footballer or a ping-pong player, they will be treated the same. They will be treated fairly within the same set of rules with the same set of sanctions in front of them and they can make the same arguments for mitigation, which I accept is part of the game, and they can make that fairly. If I speed on the way home, I would hope that the process, whether I speed in Leicestershire, Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire, would be much the same. So, why should it be different in football, cricket and swimming?

Q191 Charles Hendry: Does the same thing apply in terms of the testing regime? Should there be a uniform testing regime? For example, the athlete, having finished and won their race, comes off and is tested. Should the professional footballer at the end of the Premiership Cup be tested automatically at that point?

Mr Sparkes: Yes.

Q192 Charles Hendry: Would you expect mandatory testing at the end of a performance?

Mr Sparkes: The way in which it works at the moment is that there is a testing regime that takes place within sport. That process is defined within the wider code. If one of my swimmers is training today in Loughborough and is selected for an out-of-competition test, we have no notice of that. The first thing we know is that the tester turns up and says, "I want to test this swimmer" and the tester stays with that swimmer wherever they go until such time as they provide the sample. So, there can be no possibility of the swimmer nipping off home and forgetting about it because the tester will be in the car with them going home and that is in the wider code. That is how you do it.

Q193 Charles Hendry: After a championship event, presumably the swimmers will be ---

Mr Sparkes: They are selected at random. If you do a world record, you might get tested if it is agreed that we test all winners. There is a protocol established for different competitions or they are drawn at random. So, it could be that the last person is tested. I will give you an example in the case of a swimmer which made me chuckle at the time. She was just settling down to her tea on a Sunday teatime and two Swedish people arrived to do an out-of-competition testing and she rang me up and said, "I had no difficulty giving them a sample!" and you can follow the logic of that. It was amazing to see these two people turn up and ask, "Can I have a sample?" and that was at about six o'clock one Sunday. That happens in reality.

Q194 Chairman: Brilliant!

Mr Sparkes: Always here to, please, and your colleagues missed it!

Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Sparkes, you brought a lively end to a very good session and we are most grateful. The people who went out have missed a treat!