To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the Answer of 25 February 2009, Official Report, column 877W, on local public health laboratories, which department had responsibility for the Public Health Laboratory Service between 1999 and 2003; and where the information relating to local public health laboratories during that period is held. (261817)

The Public Health Laboratory Service was a non-departmental public body of the Department of Health, under the NHS Act 1977. Its Annual Reports and Accounts, which included information about the local public health laboratories which it managed, were laid before Parliament.