Animals in Science Regulation Unit: Annual Report 2024

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve in this debate with you in the Chair, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) for securing this debate. We come from different political traditions, but on animal testing we are united.

I often receive emails and letters in my constituency inbox about animal rights and animal testing. It is an issue that is important to the people of Stockport. I am the last Back-Bench speaker in the debate, and all the points I wanted to make have already been covered, so I will keep my remarks brief. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell), who is a good friend, for all the work she does on this issue. Sir John, I invite you to join the plant-based parliamentary group she runs in addition to all the other work she does for her constituency and her APPG roles. I am sure you would be very welcome at the next meeting.

Sadly, the reality is that in 2024, 2.64 million scientific procedures involving living animals were carried out in Britain, including 2,646 procedures on dogs and almost 2,000—1,936—procedures on non-human primates. These figures are significant, and they are the figures we know about. Because of the lack of resources, many—including myself—would argue that more procedures and testing may be going on illegally that we do not know about. This is an important issue.

I am proud to have been a Labour candidate in the 2017, 2019 and 2024 general elections. We stood on a manifesto commitment to work towards phasing out animal testing. Sadly, in 2025, almost 5 million animals were approved for experiments in the coming years. The Government need to pay attention to this issue and prioritise tackling it.

The point about Herbie’s law has been reiterated by pretty much everyone who has spoken. The Government should work towards introducing that law in legislation as soon as possible, without delay. All 650 MPs in this House of Commons would be proud of Britain’s heritage when it comes to innovation, medical research and technological research. We should harness that for animal-free and humane testing. The UK has an opportunity to be a global leader in this field and to cut out the senseless suffering that goes on. More than 92% of drugs that show promise in animal testing currently fail to meet clinical tests and benefit patients, mostly for reasons of poor efficacy and safety that were not predicted by animal testing.

I place on the record in Hansard my thanks to Animal Free Research UK, the charity that has done so much work on this issue. I am in the process of reading a fantastic book called “Rat Trap” by Dr Pandora Pound, who is involved in the Safer Medicines Trust. I look forward to learning more about the work that organisation is doing. Once again, this debate is important. The figures are quite stark and I hope the Government will take urgent action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for her persistence with me; I expect her to continue to be persistent. We can go faster with some things than others, and I will come on to the strategy that the Government have published, which has been broadly welcomed across the House. We want to go as fast as we can in the work that we do. Obviously, we are focusing today on the animals in science regulation unit, and the annual report that it published. It is not actually a statutory responsibility for it to publish that report, although maybe it should be, so I welcome its publication.

[Navendu Mishra]

The Minister is making an important speech. I am pleased to learn that pretty much everyone in this debate shares the vision of phasing out animal testing. I have two questions: first, does the Home Office have enough resources for tackling illegal and unethical animal testing; secondly, would she work with the MPs in this debate to make that report a statutory requirement?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for jumping on something I have said and holding me to account for it, which is very good. We had a similar debate to this one last week or the week before, and what came out of it—I will come on to this—was an understanding that the regulator is going through a period of reform and increasing capacity. Good things are happening in that space, but there is concern among MPs that that is not going fast or widely enough.

In the last debate, I suggested that we should meet as a group of MPs with the regulator, have these conversations and try to flush out some of the things that MPs are concerned about. The MPs who were taking part in that debate had not had the opportunity to have those conversations with the regulator, so I took back as an action that we should sit collectively and have that conversation, which I am happy to do. The reason I am not directly giving my hon. Friend the immediate response that he is asking for in terms of changing the statutory responsibility of the regulator is just because it does not sit within my remit. I want to make sure that hon. Members are satisfied that we are going as fast and as far as we can, and perhaps a meeting with the regulator would be useful on that front.

The reform that I had begun to talk about, which is overseen by my noble Friend Lord Hanson in the other place and was agreed last year, has involved an increase. Members have rightly said, “Are there enough people focused on doing this work?” We have seen an increase in inspectors from an average of 14.5 full-time equivalents in 2023 to 22 by March 2026. By expanding its capabilities, it is able to do more; the conversation that we would want to have with the regulator is about whether it is satisfied that is enough, or whether it thinks we need to go further.

The two-pronged approach of this Government is, first, to phase out the use of animal testing. I pay tribute to the campaigners pushing for Herbie’s law and I absolutely understand the need for pace and for us to be held to account to go as fast as we can. The strategy to phase out the use of animals, alongside a beefed-up regulator, is the response that this Government are taking. We want to maintain public confidence in our animal testing processes and in our research. As the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford said—I have now quoted her three times; I need to stop quoting her so much—we do need to make sure that the life sciences industry, which is important for this country, is not pushing animal testing abroad and that we maintain our standards here.

I heard the message from Members about the fear that we might fall behind our European Union and US colleagues in this space. I am very interested in working across Government with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Lord Vallance, who are leading on the phasing out of animal research work, to push as hard as we can and look abroad. I will take that back as another action and speak to my colleague Lord Vallance—I suspect hon. Members already have—to make sure that we are learning the lessons from other countries and not falling behind; that, in fact, we are keeping pace.