Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Cabinet Office – in the House of Commons at 1:52 pm on 21 July 1999.
This is a serious and difficult situation. It is deplorable that, while some environmental groups are calling for trials precisely so that we can gauge and examine the potential impact of genetically modified crops on biodiversity, other groups are trashing the experiments, wrecking the crops and preventing us securing the very evidence that we need in order to make an assessment and to make properly informed decisions. Disorder and criminal damage to property are, of course, matters for the police rather than for Ministers, but the police have a very difficult job trying to safeguard the trials.