Animal Testing

Irene Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered non-compliance animal testing incidents in laboratories.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. The uncomfortable backdrop of today’s debate is that animal experimentation results in legally sanctioned animal suffering. That is the fact that we must keep at the front of our minds, especially as we pride ourselves on being a nation of animal lovers.

At the 2024 election, I was proud to stand on a manifesto commitment to work towards phasing out animal testing. The stark reality, however, is that more than 5 million animals have been approved for use in experiments over the coming years. Behind that large headline figure lie individual cases that are often deeply distressing, such as primates being subjected to invasive brain surgery. That said, the focus of this debate is not on the legality of licences, contentious though they might be, but on what happens when even the limited legal protections are not upheld. In the current system, legally sanctioned animal suffering is compounded by systemic regulatory failure.

On 12 December 2025, the Home Office Animals in Science Regulation Unit—ASRU—published its 2024 annual report, which provides a window into the shocking suffering that occurs when our animal testing safeguards fail.

[Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Reports have shown animals accidentally crushed in a compacter, a primate dying after being trapped in a cage unnoticed, animals falling out of a vehicle and being lost, and many dying of thirst or hunger or drowning in flooded cages. Does my hon. Friend agree that those cases of non-compliance are unacceptable, that more must be done to avoid them happening in future and that the people who allow them to happen must face the consequences?

[Michael Wheeler]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and of course I agree.

ASRU is tasked with licensing animal experiments and, importantly, ensuring compliance with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. The reason for the Act is to protect animals and to require the use of non-animal alternatives wherever scientifically possible, yet the report shows far too many incidents in which animals were harmed, injured or killed because licence conditions were breached or basic standards were not met. These are not minor administrative errors. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) said, we are talking about animals drowning, starving to death, being left to die without veterinary care or being accidentally disposed of as waste.

In 2024 alone, there were 146 recorded cases of non-compliance in British laboratories. Although that figure represents a modest but welcome decrease from the previous year, the incidents still involve more than 22,000 animals. Analysis from Animal Free Research UK suggests that at least 542 animals either died or were euthanised as a direct result of those failures.

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[Michael Wheeler]

I think it will come as no surprise to my hon. Friend that I do agree with him, and I will be making that very call.

We are in a good place when it comes to the development of alternatives. I therefore welcome the publication of the Government’s “Replacing animals in science” strategy in November.

[Irene Campbell]

I should have said this earlier, but I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on phasing out animal experiments in medical research. Does my hon. Friend agree that the evidence is there, and that we can move much more quickly towards a place where animals are no longer needed in research?

[Michael Wheeler]

I thank my hon. Friend for another valuable intervention. I agree with her.

The Government’s strategy contains a range of positive measures, such as increasing funding for human-specific technologies, but we can move faster—more, we have an opportunity to grow the strategy by supporting cutting-edge, world-leading new technologies that are developed right here in the UK. I urge the Government to go further. I urge them to commit to the replacement of all animals in medical research in the UK by 2035. As colleagues have said, that is known as Herbie’s law, after a beagle bred for the laboratory but saved before he was used.

Herbie’s law would provide a practical, collaborative pathway to deliver the Government’s manifesto commitment to phase out animal testing. It would set a clear ambition to replace animal experiments in medical research over the next decade. It would establish expert oversight and support scientists through the transition. It has been carefully drafted by legal experts, is backed by more than 155 of our colleagues here in Parliament and enjoys strong public support.

The non-compliance incidents detailed in the ASRU report and the fact that those incidents regularly cause serious animal suffering in this country should shock us and prompt reflection and action. Ultimately, the only way to eliminate those incidents completely is to end animal testing once and for all. We need a research and innovation system that is scientifically excellent, ethically robust and animal-free. I urge the Government to strengthen enforcement, ensure the law is upheld in practice, and deliver a clear, timeframed road map to phase out animal testing.

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[Irene Campbell]

I thank the Minister for giving way. The strategy is of course hugely welcome, but there are no timelines associated with much of the strategy. For it to work effectively and get us to where we need to be, we need timelines. Is there any indication of when timelines are likely to be made clear to us?

[Sarah Jones]

I will certainly take that question back to my colleagues who are implementing the strategy, and I have heard from other colleagues the call for a faster timeline. The science is developing, and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles mentioned the transformational technology that we have and the opportunities for growth. We do not know the answer to some things because the science is not yet finished, but I hear the point about pushing for change as soon as possible.

The purpose of the strategy is to phase out animal testing. That is this Government’s ambition and intention. The relevant human alternatives that we want to replace it with have to continue to protect public health and product safety, and we have to be sure that replacements are able to do that. Uncomfortable though it is, we know that the use of animals in science has enabled us to develop medicines that we would not have been able to develop otherwise would. To replace that, we need to make sure that what comes afterwards is robust. It is everybody’s ambition to have a revolution in research and innovation in this country, and to build on that and use our expertise to make sure we go as fast as possible, but I hear the call for timelines and I will talk to my colleagues about how we try to do that. The strategy has a tiered approach to identify which animal test can be replaced soonest, and which are the easier ones to get done first. I very much hear the call for a timescale for a longer-term road map.

There is great public interest in making sure that we treat animals as they should be treated when they are used in research. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles talked a lot about the work of the regulator, and how we should take a robust approach to regulation. The regulator is overseen by the Home Office Minister Lord Hanson, who signed off on a package of reform to it last year, which my hon. Friend mentioned. My hon. Friend was slightly more dismissive of it than perhaps we would be, and I heard what he said, but there has been an increase in the number of people who are able to ensure oversight and a new focus through the reform programme. It has just begun, and we need to give it a bit of time to see whether it works more effectively. I hear loud and clear his calls for the Government to ensure that the regulator is as robust as it can be.

It might be useful to look at how the regulator currently works, and then we can work together going forward. I do not know if my hon. Friend has met the regulator, but it might be worth convening something with other interested MPs, to have a conversation about the reforms and where we think things will improve. The regulator is set up to prevent compliance breaches and investigate them. If non-compliance is confirmed, the regulator has a broad range of sanctions available. There is a conversation about whether it is using all those sanctions in the way that it could. The sanctions range in severity, and my hon. Friend mentioned those at the lower end, but the regulator does have more extensive powers to act.

It might be useful to have a conversation with the regulator about how we balance self-referral. Self-referrals often come in; we have very good and honourable people doing research and using the system as it should be used. I also hear the slight question about self-referral, and whether we are in the places that we need to be as much as we should be. There is a balance in the regulatory approach and how punitive the approaches can be. We want the sector to be open and transparent, so we have to get that balance right. I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that. If we are disproportionate—if that is a risk—then work gets offshored and goes elsewhere, where the systems are not anywhere near as powerful as they are in this country. We need to have proportionality in our approach to non-compliance.

We also need to understand that self-reporting is not a bad thing, but a good thing. We want a culture of care that is respectful of animals. Most incidents of non-compliance are self-reported, as I have said, and the decisions taken after that are then proportionate. Where there are more significant breaches, the sanctions are there, and we could have a conversation with the regulator about when those sanctions are imposed and when they are not.

I thank colleagues again for raising this issue. We have a strict and rigorous licensing regime, which I am partly responsible for, both for the 100-odd companies that are able to test on animals and the 13,000 individuals who have a licence to use animals in testing. The regulator is going through reform and has had its functions beefed up over the last year. We have an ambition as a Government to end the use of animals in science, but, as a Minister, I will always commit to push for more and will always listen to my colleagues for advice.

The good takeaways from this debate are that we need to understand where the regulator is coming from a bit more, what the balance is for proportionality, how we can all move forward, and, having heard the calls for more timeliness in ending the use of animals in testing, how we can work with colleagues across the Government to deliver that.

Question put and agreed to.