Laboratory Animals: Animal Welfare Act

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 591775, relating to laboratory animals and the Animal Welfare Act.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. This petition closed on 20 January and attracted more than 110,000 signatures, including 139 from my constituency. Leading this debate today fills me with a sense of déjà vu. Just over three months ago, I led a debate in which this House considered two petitions relating to animal testing. One called for all animal testing in the UK to be banned and the other for a phasing out of animal experiments. In that debate, I quoted an early scholar of jurisprudence, Jeremy Bentham, who said,

“Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”

Here I stand again, repeating the very same question that has been brought to the fore by this petition, which calls for legislation to include laboratory animals in the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

To give some background, I must point out that the Animal Welfare Act is 16 years old. Within it is an unnecessary suffering clause, which sets out the criteria for an offence to be committed. It includes the principle that any action—or indeed failure to take action—that results in animal suffering must be against a protected animal. The petition highlights that laboratory animals are not protected by the 2006 Act and are therefore victims of unnecessary suffering.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

While I acknowledge that there remains a need for animal testing in some areas of medicine, current legislation negates any need to urgently move away from unnecessary procedures or experiments. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government need to apply greater pressure for alternative methods to be used?

[Martyn Day]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point. The fact that we know that 90% of animal experiments do not bring any real benefit tells us that we need to move very quickly in the opposite direction. I would favour a full ban on animal experimentation, because we could be better using the alternatives.

It strikes me as unbelievable that, in this nation of professed animal lovers, laboratory animals are categorically excluded from the 2006 Act. We must not forget that that includes dogs and cats, who many of us take into our homes to love and care for and who enrich our lives. Therefore, by default, the 2006 Act endorses laboratory animals undergoing what can only be deemed as necessary suffering.

The Government response to the petition confirms that. It states:

“There is an explicit exclusion under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (AWA), to provide for the legitimate conduct of procedures on ‘protected animals’ for scientific or educational purposes that may cause pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.”

In other words, the 2006 Act legalises, for example, the daily force feeding of chemicals directly into the stomachs of factory farmed puppies without pain relief or anaesthetic. Will the Minister enlighten us about the scientific or educational purpose fulfilled by that particular procedure?

[Martyn Day]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend’s comments. I will come on to that shortly. It is an absolutely abhorrent practice.

More importantly, perhaps the Minister can give reasons to assist us all in understanding why this procedure, which is classified as mild suffering under Home Office licensing, cannot be replaced with human-based research.

At this point, I will say a few words about the man who started the petition, Peter Egan, who hoped to be here with us but had to tend to an animal care event at home; I am sure we all extend our best wishes for a positive outcome. Many will be familiar with Peter as an excellent actor who is well known for bringing characters to life on our television screens. What may be less well known is that Peter is also the patron of the science-based campaign, For Life On Earth.

I met Peter and the For Life On Earth founder and director, Louise Owen, ahead of the debate, and Peter informed me of the abject horror he and others experienced while visiting a foie gras farm in France. For the sake of clarity, foie gras is defined as the liver of a duck or goose, fattened by force-feeding. I certainly do not want to stand accused of speciesism, but I can only imagine the compounding horror that force-feeding puppies would generate. That is why we all need to know what reasons can justify such acts. How can such acts be acceptable to a Government who rightly acknowledge that animals can experience feelings and sensations, and are in fact currently legislating to recognise that in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill?

This is an appropriate juncture to raise early-day motion 175, on a public scientific hearing on animal experiments, tabled last June by my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) and supported by 104 cross-party Members. It is relevant to note that the EDM was remarked on by myself and others during the October debate. It commends the introduction of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which will enshrine in law that animals can experience feelings and sensations. It also highlights that legislation’s connection with For Life On Earth’s revelation that intensive breeding of laboratory dogs was taking place in the UK, and noted

“that scientists in the wider scientific community, outside the animal-based research sector, openly acknowledge the failure of animal testing in the search for human treatments and cures”.

[Margaret Ferrier]

I thank the hon. Member for being so generous in giving way a second time. Gene-based medicine is a rapidly developing science that allows treatment to be completely personalised based on a patient’s DNA. That could not be replicated through animal experimentation. Does the hon. Member agree that this kind of medical science must be prioritised when it comes to research, to avoid unnecessary harm to animals?

[Martyn Day]

I agree entirely. That form of medicine is better not only for animals but for humans as well.

Consequently, early-day motion 175 called on the Government to urgently

“mandate a rigorous public scientific hearing, judged by independent experts from the relevant science fields, to stop the funding of the now proven failed practice of animal experimentation and increase funding for state-of-the-art human-based research, such as human-on-a-chip and gene-based medicine, to prioritise treatments and cures for human patients and stop the suffering of laboratory dogs and other animals.”

I hope this is not viewed as a separate matter, because it is undoubtedly related. After all, the UK remains the top user of primates and dogs in experiments in Europe. The petition reminds us that a recent exposé showed harrowing footage of the factory farming of laboratory dogs in the UK. Statistics for 2020 reveal that 4,320 procedures were carried out on dogs, and of these, 4,270 procedures were carried out on beagles, the preferred breed for experiments due to their size, docility and submissive nature, meaning that they take less effort and expense to house and are easy to experiment on. In other words, they are easy prey.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.