House of Commons Papers

The HRI faces a number of pressures which are unlikely to go away. Successive reductions in funding from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will continue and there is uncertainty as to the future of the organisation while it awaits its five-year review in 2002/3. Legislation has been pending for 10 years to establish HRI as a statutory corporation with functions and powers to enable it to carry out its remit and the Committee urges that it be laid before Parliament in the coming session.