§ MR. PAULTON (Durham, Bishop Auckland)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether certificates are issued to persons holding licences under the Cruelty to 152 Animals Act, 1876, allowing them to make experiments on living animals without anæsthetics except during the initial operation; whether during later stages of the experiment the holder of such certificate would be at liberty, should he so desire, to keep the animal alive without the further use of anæsthetics for the purpose of conducting observations and dissections; and whether he still adheres without qualification to his former official statement that certificates of exemption from the compulsory use of anæsthetics are only given for such operations as inoculations or hypodermic injections, which are of a comparatively painless character.
* SIR M. WHITERIDLEYThe nature of the certificates referred to would be more accurately described as follows: Under the terms of Section 3, Sub-section (3) of the Act certificates are granted, the effect of which is to exempt the holder from the obligation to kill the animal experimented upon before it recovers from the influence of the anæsthetic, when killing the animal would necessarily frustrate the object of the experiment, and provided that the animal is killed as soon as that object is attained. I would add, with reference to the second paragraph, that the sole use of the certificate is to authorise the keeping alive of the animal after the influence of the anæsthetic has passed off for the purpose of observation and study. I should certainly not allow any certificate involving dissections or painful operations without the fresh use of anæsthetics. The statement mentioned in the third paragraph, to which I adhere without qualification, had reference to a different class of certificates from those just dealt with, viz., certificates granting total exemption from the compulsory use of anæsthetics.