Porton Down shake-up harming critical national security science, whistleblower warns

Work by scientists at the laboratory helped national security efforts linked to the 2018 Salisbury novichok poisoning and the Covid pandemic. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

A shake-up of the government’s defence science powerhouse at Porton Down has severely damaged morale and harmed work on critical science that supports national security, a senior whistleblower has told the Guardian.

The whistleblower said they were raising concerns in the public interest that the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), based largely at Porton Down in Wiltshire, had been left in a paralysing limbo because of the changes.