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By Matt Slater
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 The new testing agency has been held up for months by rows over costs
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Britain's much-delayed drug-testing body will finally be in operation by the end of 2009, Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe has confirmed.
The new national anti-doping agency (Nado) will take on the responsibility for drug testing from UK Sport, the body that also funds elite sport.
The agency, provisionally called UK Anti-Doping, will cost £7.2m a year, a 60% hike on the current testing budget.
"The Nado will build on UK Sport's excellent work," said Sutcliffe.
"But the global fight against doping sport has shifted and the move to a new, stand-alone Nado reflects that change."
As well as continuing UK Sport's "world-leading" athlete education and testing work, Sutcliffe said the new body will be given "significant new powers" to ensure Britain's remains in the forefront of anti-doping efforts in the build-up to London 2012.
These new powers will include a more centralised approach to pursuing and adjudicating on doping cases, and much closer links will be sought with law enforcement agencies, particularly Customs and Excise and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
"We have learned that to be truly effective we need the ability to target manufacturers, traffickers and suppliers of prohibited substances," added Sutcliffe, who was speaking at an anti-doping conference hosted by UK Sport at Lord's.
More soon.
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