Foreign researchers in biology face vetting

Foreign scientists and research students may have to undergo rigorous vetting if they want to work on dangerous biological agents in British universities, senior Government officials said yesterday.

An informal system of checking overseas researchers wanting to work in potentially sensitive areas may also have to be tightened amid growing concern over the spread of biological weapons.

Patrick Lamb, the deputy head of the Foreign Office's non-proliferation department, said the large number of researchers, many from overseas, working in British laboratories on potentially lethal germ agents was a "major problem".

Mr Lamb said there might now be a case for strengthening the controls by vetting individual students. "We recognise this is a major problem. Perhaps we need ... to make sure the individuals don't use the information they acquire," he said.

Universities have resisted such controls on the grounds that they could infringe academic freedom. The head of the non-proliferation department, Tim Dowse, said in evidence to the Commons' foreign affairs committee that a system had been set up for universities and other institutions to notify the Foreign Office of students from "countries of concern", registered for particular courses.

The voluntary system was set up after the discovery that the head of the Iraqi biological weapons programme, Rihab Taha, had studied for a doctorate on plant pathogens at the University of East Anglia in Norwich in the Eighties.