MSPs have called for a reprieve of national references laboratories, which study E. coli and the food poisoning bacterium, Campylobacter, that are threatened by the removal of the Scottish Executive's contracts next April. Laboratories' co-director Hugh Pennington, the Aberdeen University bacteriology professor who headed the investigation into the country's worst E. coli outbreak, warned that expertise on tracking the spread of infection will dissipate if the funding is removed.