Laboratory Animals: Animal Welfare Act

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the pithy but powerful remarks from the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson). I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for his introduction to the debate and the 187 people from Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport who signed the petition.

I would like animal testing to be consigned to the history books; I think all of us in the Chamber do. The question is about the journey that we take between now and when that glorious day happens. What is that journey? What is the road map between now and then? What steps must we take to make what we achieve real and fair: something that does not simply export pain abroad, but makes us a force for good—a leader in the world when it comes to defining the new moral standards that there should be between humanity and animals in the future?

Every animal matters, and because of that we should not accept that some animals have to spend their entire lives as laboratory inmates, being tested on with cruel consequences. That is why we need to invest in non-animal technologies as an alternative to animal testing. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) clearly set out the powerful opportunities given by those alternatives. These testing technologies are becoming more sophisticated each and every year, so there is no excuse for them not to play a bigger role in the strategy each and every year.

I would like non-animal technologies to play a bigger role not just in terms of R&D funding and the objective, but in how the Government talk about this issue. The journey must be about not only science, process and reporting, but ambition and language. Frankly, for the last four and a bit years that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) have been Members of Parliament, we have heard roughly the same language from the Government. I do not doubt that there are animal lovers in the Government, but I would like the language to evolve and our commitment to the issue to be strengthened. I would like the language that we choose to describe our ambition to end animal testing to be further improved each and every year.

I hope that when he gets to his feet, the Minister will be able to use more powerful language in this respect than we have had in the past. That direction of travel is important.

[Margaret Ferrier]

In my opinion, a key issue is a lack of accountability and oversight at the Home Office. Applications are not reviewed by experts in the field and there are concerns that the application-for-licence process is used as a tick-box exercise. Does the hon. Member agree that the Home Office must take animal testing seriously and treat applications with due regard?

[Luke Pollard]

The hon. Member’s intervention raises an interesting question. In Labour circles, animal testing is often viewed as a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs competency—indeed, I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), from the shadow environment team, is responding for us. But in Government circles, animal testing is a Home Office competency. If the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) had been Home Secretary, rather than the Members who were, would the Home Office have the same language and ambition around animal testing as in the right hon. Member’s changes on animal welfare when he was Environment Secretary? That is a good example of how different personalities within Government have been able to move on debates about animal welfare quite considerably, but it does not mean that every part of Government has moved on with the same focus.

Animal welfare responsibilities exist across the Government. I made the point in the animal sentience debate that not only do we need strong animal sentience laws and a committee that covers the full breadth right across Government, but we need DEFRA and that committee to have the power to go into every Department to compel co-operation and collaboration with the committee. If there is a knock at the door and people say, “Who’s that? Oh, it’s DEFRA. Oh well,” that is not a good enough answer when it comes to animal welfare. I also hope that we can move forward on animal testing.

I will briefly make a number of points that were raised with me ahead of the debate by people in Plymouth. One is about animal testing and Brexit. A large number of media articles suggest that our departure from the European Union has in some way moved our animal testing regime away from what we had when we were EU members. I will be grateful if the Minister can set out clearly the consequences of the decision to align the UK to the European Chemicals Agency’s board of appeal structure. In theory, that is welcome, but the ECA states that certain ingredients must be tested on animals before being tested on humans. Although it rules out large parts of animal testing, there is concern that that ban deals with ingredients rather than finished products.

As a country, we have made large steps forward on banning animal testing for cosmetics, but there is concern—I will be grateful if the Minister can rule this out categorically—that that new decision means that certain cosmetics, including finished products and ingredients, will still be required to be dual tested in the European Union and the United Kingdom. It is one of those areas that generates concern, and I think hearing that from the Minister would satisfy many people who are worried about that.

The importance placed on replacement and reduction is good. The three R’s of our animal testing framework—replacement, reduction and refinement of welfare provisions when testing animals—are welcome, but we need a fourth R: restriction. That framework needs to provide not regulation of where we are currently but a road map to where we should be. That is the evolution that I think Members call for when they look at enhancing the Animal Welfare Act 2006. We should all be proud of that flagship piece of Labour animal welfare legislation, but that was a very long time ago, and an update to the framework to include a road map out of animal testing would be very welcome.

There are some very good technologies available to us at the moment. There are too many to list, but complex cell models are a really good example. In the scientific community, there is real optimism about the potential for CCMs to help predict a drug’s effectiveness in clinical trials, reducing the need for animal testing. I would like the Government to invest in research into such non-animal technologies. There is a real opportunity to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central raised the opportunity to grant further funding to this area in the spending review. I encourage the Minister to work with his colleagues in DEFRA to look at whether non-animal testing technologies could be explicitly developed as a priority area within the shared competency between the Home Office and DEFRA in relation to spending review submissions to the Treasury.

Animal testing is bad not only for animals but for our economy, especially given the erroneous and negative results we have heard about during the debate. One area that has not been discussed so far is the impact on the Ministry of Defence. I am mindful of the importance of national security. One concern raised with me, as a representative of a military city, is how many animals the MOD uses in animal testing. I think all of us in the House support a strong national defence. We recognise that, in an ever-changing world where there are more and more pressures and threats against us, it is right that we have an understanding of the new biological, chemical and radiological agents that could be used against the United Kingdom and our allies, from both a military and a civilian point of view.

However, the large number of animals tested on, in particular by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, is a concern. I recognise that that number has reduced, which is welcome—according to the latest answers to parliamentary questions, it was 1,500 in 2019 and 1,194 in 2020—but there is potential for a road map to decrease that further. We can apply further pressure to reduce testing on animals by the military establishment and move to more non-animal testing.

[John Nicolson]

Has the hon. Gentleman ever heard a good argument against using anaesthetics to reduce animals’ pain?

[Luke Pollard]

If we are to experiment on animals—I concede that, in a small number of circumstances, the technologies are not yet there to replace those procedures—then ensuring that they do not suffer seems to be the minimum standard that we should be providing. I entirely get the hon. Gentleman’s point.

According to the Government’s own figures, the MOD conducted 58,867 experimental procedures on animals in the decade leading up to 2018. According to Cruelty Free International, those included infecting macaque monkeys with tuberculosis, mice with Ebola and marmosets with pneumonic plague and haemorrhagic fever. We all recognise that there are real threats to us, especially from those diseases. However, the road map must take us out of that place, and one of my questions for the Minister about his responsibilities and drive in this area is whether that can go beyond just the Home Office. Can we make sure that it reaches into every part of Government, including our friends at DEFRA and the MOD?

A final point that was raised with me relates to animal welfare and animal testing in trade deals. As a nation outside the European Union, we are embarking on a new journey, making new trade deals with other countries. We have already seen real concerns about the trade deal signed with Australia; we are at risk of undercutting our famers with food produced abroad to lower standards, particularly with respect to animal welfare and the level of certain pharmaceuticals.

There is also a concern about animal testing with respect to some of the products that we could be importing into the United Kingdom—both finished products and ingredients within products. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out where the Government’s view on higher and higher restrictions on animal testing sits in relation to trade deals. Not only do I not want to see our farmers undercut by food produced to lower standards abroad, but I do not want to see us as a country become more reliant on ingredients and chemicals that have been tested on animals abroad.

We should be clear, as part of our mission as a nation to spread best practice, that we should use trade deals as a lever to improve animal welfare, rather than accepting the export of poor animal welfare to other parts of the world. There is a real opportunity to end animal testing. I would like us to set out a road map for how we will get to that point. I encourage the Minister to grasp that opportunity with both hands.