David (Lord) Sainsbury, a short profile
David Sainsbury A multi-billionaire (he was once named as the third richest man in Britain in the Sunday Times Rich List), Sainsbury's donations to the Labour Party since 1994 total over £11 million. This sum is said to have included £1m to help clear the party's overdraft after the 1997 General Election campaign. (BBC Online September 8, 1999). In the 1980's he had famously helped bankroll the Social Democrats (SDP), but switched to Labour in the '90's following the collapse of the SDP/Liberal alliance, and Labour's move to the right. In 1997, less than 6 months after Labour came to power, David Sainsbury was duly rewarded for his generosity to Labour Party coffers. He was appointed to the House of Lords as Lord Sainsbury of Turville by Tony Blair. In July 1998, after further multi-million pound donations to the party, Sainsbury was drafted into the government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, within the Dept of Trade and Industry (DTI). It was widely claimed he had in effect bought himself a place in the government and a life peerage, in a sinister echo of the sleaze which characterised the years of previous Conservative rule. As well a substantial stake in his family's supermarket empire and other large investments, he was also the owner of the biotech company Diatech, and he personally owned the world-wide patent rights over a key gene, called a 'translator enhancer', currently used in the genetic modification process. (The Guardian Feb. 16, 1999) It is the same gene at the centre of a food scare following tests on rats that were fed GM potatoes. The patent for this gene will create massive profits. He also had an interest in the Sainsbury Laboratory, which is partly funded by a charity he set up. Since he became Science Minister, funding to this laboratory from a government quango has increased by 400%. Sainsbury has the final say on who is appointed to this quango, called the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), which has spent more than £18m on research into GM-related crops. Eight out of 15 people appointed to this quango have connections to the pharmaceutical or biotech industry. On being appointed to government, as an unelected minister, he was obliged to place all of his investments into a blind trust, where, in theory, he no longer has influence over how his investment portfolio is managed. However this is viewed with some scepticism by most commentators. The then shadow DTI minister said "It's not a blind trust. David Sainsbury and the whole world knows that he has a big shareholding in the supermarket chain and we also know that he was an investor in two companies that are going to make money out of GM food." (BBC Online, February 14, 1999). Sainsbury's appointment caused uproar among environmental and anti-GM campaigners, as well as opposition politicians, who viewed it as a serious conflict of interest. The same is true of the Girton project. It is thought the proposed research centre will be directed, to a significant degree, in generating biotech products of a diagnostic and therapeutic class. The patents on such products could generate substantial income - irrespective of the ultimate utility or safety of the products in question. Predictably Tony Blair personally leapt to the defence of the Labour Party 'golden goose'. "Let me say two things. First of all with David Sainsbury, the hounding of him is unpleasant and wrong. There is no conflict of interest whatsoever, and he has followed the rules to the letter, as he should do". It should have been little surprise then when Sainsbury turned his attention to planned Cambridge University primate research centre. In February 2001 the district council unanimously refused planning permission for the centre, largely because it would be built on green belt land, but in response to widespread local opposition on many issues. Sainsbury, an ex-Cambridge University student, stepped in on the side of the university. He wrote to the council in his role as science minister, advising them they should ignore green belt legislation because the proposed research was in the "national interest". Tony Blair also weighed in on the side of university, no doubt influenced by Sainsbury's continuing importance to Labour Party finances. Even so, local councillors held firm and rejected the plans a second time, with only four voting in favour despite intense pressure from Sainsbury, Blair and the government. The university then appealed to the national planning inspectorate, and there was a public hearing on the issue. Once again the government intervened and took the highly unusual step of sidelining the whole planning process and taking the decision themselves. Sainsbury's influence is now complete, as the government has hijacked the democratic and planning process, and will issue a decree on the matter at a time of their choosing. This is a political scandal and an example of blatant government corruption, and should they succeed, the victims will be the many thousands of monkeys tortured and killed in the name of corporate profits and fraudulent science. Profile
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David (now Lord) Sainsbury is a crucial figure in the dispute over the building of the new primate research centre. Sainsbury is the key to why this government is so determined not only to build the primate laboratory, but also to impose GM crops and food products on the population, despite huge public opposition in both cases.