Laboratory Animals: Animal Welfare Act

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak for the official Opposition today. As it stands, this issue is a Home Office responsibility, but I am a shadow DEFRA Minister. I think that reflects the Labour party’s commitment to animal welfare and where our hearts are. I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for leading this important and timely debate. He gave a rounded, Benthamite argument on behalf of the Petitions Committee and highlighted some of the extreme practices, such as the force-feeding of animals, in the world of animal testing.

We are considering e-petition 591775 relating to laboratory animals and the Animal Welfare Act. The petition received 110,000 signatures from across the UK, including 125 concerned citizens in my constituency of Leeds North West. I thank all those who signed the petition for bringing the matter to the House today. Animal welfare transcends party politics, as we have seen in today’s debate. Respect and compassion for sentient beings are issues of morality and, as the debate has shown, of the utmost importance to the British people.

We have had an excellent debate, and I would like to highlight some contributions from hon. Members across the House. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) demonstrated his knowledge of transgenic treatments, where the balance between practices and their benefits needs careful consideration. I thank him for that. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) reminded us of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which is rapidly approaching the statute book, and the impact that it could have on testing, as well as the need for the Minister to respond to those points.

The right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who has worked and campaigned on this issue in the House for many years, is right that progress has been too slow. He was also right to highlight the need to tackle the issue internationally and to talk about it at international and intergovernmental level. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) made a good point about setting an international example that I do not believe is in competition with the point made by the right hon. Member for North Thanet; they are complementary points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) is right to remind us that many of the Government’s pledges on animal welfare come from Labour’s DEFRA team, and that ASPA regulations are considered way out of date for modern animal welfare standards. I hope that the Minister will address that. The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) was right to point out that animal testing has grown even though other methods have greatly progressed, and that all animals are equal and they feel no less pain in the lab than living at home with us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) is right that DEFRA and the Home Office might have different ambitions for animal testing and that we need to update the three R’s framework—that is well overdue. He has recently joined the shadow Defence team and speaks knowledgeably about the level of defence testing on animals. He is right to have those concerns, and I am sure he will pursue them in his role as shadow Armed Forces Minister. I congratulate him on his appointment.

I am pleased that the Government have a policy of limiting the number of animals used in science, and I am grateful that non-animal methods of research have developed and improved thanks to the work of brilliant scientific minds—not least those in the United Kingdom—and the tireless work of animal rights activists, many of whom have been mentioned in the debate. The development of alternative methods using human cells and tissues—so-called in vitro methods—and of artificial intelligence and advanced computer modelling techniques, or “in silico models”, means that we should have a greatly reduced reliance on animal testing.

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]

However, putting those advances and public opinion aside, we need to go further, as the debate has reflected. First, we need a comprehensive review of animal testing. That means reviewing the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which the right hon. Member for North Thanet referred to at length, and a commitment to ending the severe suffering that is permitted under UK legislation. I hope that the Minister will respond to that point, as it was raised by a number of Members. We also require a stringent review of defined areas in regulatory testing with the aim of immediately identifying and eliminating avoidable testing. I would like to hear what progress has been made in that regard.

For transparency, we need an end to the opaque project licence applications for animal research programmes. For any research programme to be authorised, it must be supported by a project licence. A project licence is important in understanding the study. We need to understand the scientific rationale behind it and the details of the procedures that will be carried out, and, perhaps most importantly, know that the proposed procedures will have the minimum possible impact on the animal. I do not believe that is where we are currently.

Project licence applications seem like shadowy affairs with little oversight. Some charities suggest that fully anonymised versions of selected project licence applications could be shared with stakeholders with expertise in replacement methods, who could then suggest techniques that could replace animal testing, helping to ensure that the legal requirement to use non-animal methods wherever possible is being properly enforced. Will the Minister consider that and outline what other steps the Government will take to create a more transparent method for licensing applications?

Finally, as we have heard a number of times in the debate, the Government should commit to phasing out animal testing altogether. Labour is the party of animal welfare. We know that more needs to be done to protect animals, and ending harmful and unnecessary animal testing is imperative to that goal. Since we know that the Government will not commit to that at this time, will the Minister at the very least tell us what will be done to reduce the suffering of animals in research that is happening right now?

This debate is important and timely, and I am glad to have been afforded the opportunity to question the Government and amplify the Labour party’s message that we must work to end harmful and unnecessary animal testing once and for all.