Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food: BSE Inquiry Liaison Unit: Registered...

This series contains records and papers charting the Cabinet Office Inquiry into Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and the activities of the MAFF Secretariat formed to liaise with the Inquiry team

The series has files on:

• Preparation of the Announcement of an Inquiry into BSE;
• Establishing the Inquiry;
• Giving Evidence-Rights and Obligations of Staff;
• Guidance and Precedents;
• The North Report;
• Winding Up The Inquiry: Exit Strategy;
• Government Handling of the Inquiry;
• Government's Final Response to BSE Inquiry Report.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

MAFF's BSE Inquiry Liaison Unit was established to provide full co-operation to the Inquiry in their investigation of their remit and to support past and present MAFF staff, past Ministers and members of advisory committees in their relationship with the Inquiry. They were also the starting point for witnesses needing access to official papers to help with the preparation of witness statements.

By way of background, it is important to bear in mind that this Inquiry was a massive undertaking. Lord Phillips and his team spent nearly three years examining what happened day by day during the ten years that led up to the announcement of 20 March 1996 that BSE had probably generated a new and fatal human disease.

More than 1,200 people submitted written evidence to the Inquiry; there were 138 days of public oral evidence from 333 witnesses and the team looked at 3,000 files of contemporary official documents.

Up until 2001 the full estimated cost of the Inquiry to the public purse was about £29 million.

The final Inquiry report was expected to consist of a main volume of perhaps 100-200 pages (containing the key findings, criticisms and recommendations and 15 supporting volumes each of at least 100 pages, amounting to 4,000 pages in all)