Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans her Department has to (a) establish the UK as a leader in the protections for animal rights and (b) reduce animal testing that does not constitute vital medical research.

The Government's Action Plan for Animal Welfare was published in May 2021 and can be found here.

The use of animals remains important for improving the understanding of how biological systems work, in the development of safe new medicines, treatments and technologies, and in testing chemicals. Government’s current approach is to actively support and fund the development and dissemination of techniques that replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in research (the 3Rs) through UK Research and Innovation, and to ensure that the UK has a robust regulatory system for licensing animal studies and enforcing legal standards. The legal framework in the UK requires that animals are only ever used in science where there are no alternatives, where the number of animals used is the minimum needed to achieve the scientific benefit, and where the potential harm to animals is limited to that needed to achieve the scientific benefit.

The Home Office Regulator will only grant licences to use animals in science where there are no alternatives, where the number of animals used is the minimum needed to achieve the scientific benefit, and where the potential harm to animals is limited to that needed to achieve the scientific benefit.