Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of the need for a ministerial portfolio for eradicating the use of animals in laboratory experiments.

The Government continues to actively support and fund the development and dissemination of the 3Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement) for the use of animals in scientific procedures. This is achieved through UK Research and Innovation’s funding of the National Centre for the 3Rs, which works nationally and internationally to drive the uptake of non-animal technologies, and through research into the development of alternatives by Innovate UK, the Medical Research Council, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

The Government is committed to the development of alternatives to using animals in scientific procedures and to avoiding unnecessary suffering and I am the Minister with lead responsibility in this area.