Dear Sir or Madam,

I should be grateful if you would provide me with details of
licences granted for animal testing for research funded wholly or
in part by cosmetics companies for each year since 1997.
Specifically, I would like to know the year of issue, project aims
and expected benefits associated with each licence.

If the cost of providing this information would be prohibitive, I
am most interested in more recent years, so please bring forward
the cut-off date if necessary.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Geraint Bevan

Reference : T74/9

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 04/01/2009 11:03:59 PM

A reply is attached.

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Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Home Office's
handling of my FOI request 'Animal testing funded by cosmetics
companies'.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/an...

I am aware of the voluntary ban on the testing of cosmetic products
and ingredients on animals. However, medical researchers have told
me of research on animals being conducted in UK institutions with
supporting funding from cosmetics companies. It may be the case
that the research is justified on purely medical grounds and that
the companies concerned are acting philanthropically or merely
hoping that the research will be of incidental benefit to them. But
given the clear potential for conflict of interest, there is a very
strong need for transparency.

I would submit that, regardless of potential exemptions within the
Freedom of Information Act, there is an over-riding public interest
in ensuring that such research is fully justified. Wrapping the
granting of licences in excessive secrecy and preventing any
scrutiny makes it impossible to have a sensible public debate about
the research and impossible for the public to decide whether the
existing rules strike the right balance of competing concerns.

On a narrower point, I indicated in my request that if costs were
prohibitive, I would be prepared for the cut off date to be altered
to bring the costs down to an acceptable level. Consequently, I do
not consider it reasonable that my request for information was
rejected on cost grounds without any attempt to reduce the period.

Regarding the comments that it is not necessarily possible to
provide comprehensive funding information covering the full 5 years
of a research project, I fully understand the nature of research
funding. I am not requesting that the Home Office should undertake
additional research to discover where funding is coming from;
merely that I should be provided with the information that is held.
I understand that such information may not necessarily convey the
full story.

Consequently, I would like this decision to be reviewed.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Geraint Bevan

Dear Sir or Madam,

as an addendum to my request for an internal review of the decision
not to provide me with information about funding of animal
experiments by cosmetics companies, I would like to reiterate the
specific terms of my original request. I asked for:

"the year of issue, project aims and expected benefits associated
with each licence"

The statement in the reply that "information contained in the
project licences is subject to a duty of confidentiality" is
bizarre, to say the least. I did not ask which specific companies
were involved, nor the value of any contracts, nor anything else
that might reasonably be considered commercially confidential.

On the cost grounds, again, I note that the majority of the
projected cost of satisfying the request would arise from manual
examination of the licence applications.

Aware of the potential sensitivities surrounding animal research
(increased, in my view, by an institutional lack of transparency
which makes informed debate difficult), I asked for only the
minimum classes of information in which I am interested. However, I
would be perfectly happy to be provided with more data than I asked
for, leaving me to do the examination rather than the Home Office.
This may reduce the costs of providing the information
significantly.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Geraint Bevan

Dear Dr Bevan

I am writing to you in response to your request for an Internal Review
request sent 22/01/09. In your original request you asked:

I am writing to request an internal review of Home Office's handling
of my FOI request 'Animal testing funded by cosmetics companies'.

The case number for this request is CR10957 and in accordance with our
Internal Review procedures the 40 working day deadline for a response is
19/03/09. I will be in touch again shortly, but please do not hesitate to
contact me if you have any queries about the handling of your request in
the meantime.

Many Thanks

Martin Riddle | Information Rights Team
Information Management Service | Financial and Commercial Group
4th Floor | Seacole Building | Home Office | 2 Marsham Street | London
SW1P 4DF
Tel: 020 7035 4252 | Fax: 020 7035 0739

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Dr Bevan

Please find attached a response to your internal review request of FOI
case 10957

Many Thanks

Martin Riddle | Information Rights Team
Information Management Service | Financial and Commercial Group
4th Floor | Seacole Building | Home Office | 2 Marsham Street | London
SW1P 4DF
Tel: 020 7035 4252 | Fax: 020 7035 0739

show quoted sections

Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Martin

thank you for undertaking the review and providing me with a
detailed explanation of the likely costs involved.

regards,

Geraint