HL Deb 14 May 1975 vol 360 cc718-34

2.53 p.m.

Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY rose to call attention to abuses of the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, a great deal of research and study has gone into my speech this afternoon and I wish to acknowledge with appreciation the help I have received from the RSPCA, of whose Committee on Animal Experiments I am a member. Cruelty to animals is an offence against the law of this country. Acts of Parliament going back many years were largely consolidated in the Protection of Animals Act 1911 and the corresponding Act for Scotland of 1912. The definition of "cruelty", as set out in that Act, is wide and comprehensive. For example, to administer a poisonous or injurious drug or substance without any reasonable cause or excuse, or to torture, infuriate, or terrify an animal could be an offence under that Act. But some actions involving cruelty, or the infliction of pain, may be lawfully committed if they are done far the purposes and within the conditions of the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876. What are they, my Lords? I shall first deal with the purpose.

The Act of 1876 says that it is not permissible to perform on a living animal; that is, a vertebrate, an experiment calculated to give pain unless the experiment is performed with a view to the advancement by new discovery of physiological knowledge or knowledge which will be useful … for saving or prolonging life or alleviating suffering … Those words, my Lords, govern the purpose of all experiments conducted under the protection of the 1876 Act. So far as I can ascertain, those words have remained unchanged for the hundred years of the Act of 1876. So far as I know, they have not been interpreted by any court at any time. I suggest that one reason for that is that experimenters who hold licences under the provisions of that Act may not be prosecuted, except with the assent of the Secretary of State, and I have no knowledge of anyone ever having been prosecuted. Infringements brought to light by inspectors have been reported and those concerned have been admonished, warned or have even had their licences withdrawn. But, so far as I am aware, not one has ever been prosecuted.

The Act contains no definition of "experiment" or "pain". The Home Secretary has exercised wide powers of interpretation himself. For example, "pain" is regarded as including, discomfort or interference with an animal's normal state of health or well-being. Your Lordships will recognise that that goes very wide indeed. Again, the word "experiment" is taken to cover any procedure designed to find the answer to a problem. There are other questions of interpretation in the Act, to which I shall refer later. But the point I want to make at this stage is that the Act of 1876 is a suspending Act in so far as it relieves persons, licensed under its provisions to conduct experiments on living animals, from penalties to which they would otherwise be liable under the Protection of Animals Act 1911. It grants them immunity from prosecution under the 1911 Act. Licences may be granted by the Home Secretary to qualified persons to carry out experiments, on condition that during the whole of an experiment the animal must be fully anæsthetised and, if the pain is likely to continue after the effect of the anæsthetic has ceased, or if any serious injury has been inflicted on the animal, it must be killed before it recovers from the anaesthetic.

Those are the conditions of the granting of a licence under the 1876 Act. Those standard conditions for carrying out an experiment under the Act give quite a misplaced feeling of comfort to many troubled people. They think that pain is at least taken care of by anæsthetics, or by euthanasia while still under the influence of an anæsthetic. But the fact is that only a fraction of 1 per cent of experiments took place under those conditions in 1973. Only 180,000 out of over 5 million experiments were conducted under the simple licensed conditions that I have read out. All the others were carried out under special certificates which excused the licensee from strict compliance with the requirements as to anæsthesia and euthanasia.

Those certificates excuse the licence-holder from observing the conditions of the licence, but he must observe the conditions of the certificate. For example, 500,000 experiments were conducted under Certificate B. Certificate B waives the requirement of the licence to kill the animal while still anæsthetised if pain or injury still continue afterwards. Those half a million animals were returned to full consciousness to suffer any pain or injury resulting from the experiment. But by far the greatest number of experiments—that is, 85 per cent. of them, representing 4½ million—were in 1973 carried out under Certificate A. Experiments under Certificate A are generally non-surgical cases where anæsthesia is dispensed with, and it is in this very large field that most of the abuses of the Act in my opinion take place.

Certificate A covers the testing of drugs, poisons, sera and vaccines. It also covers trying out for safety, quality and efficiency such preparations as face powder, shampoos, weed killers, insecticides and substances which are supposed to wash whiter than white. You name it, my Lords, and some animals will have been forced to eat it, have it injected or put into their eyes, or they may have been shaved of hair or fur so that substances may be tried out upon their skins. Many of these experiments are described in a recently published book by Mr. Richard Ryder, entitled Victims of Science, which I reviewed in the Spectator on 1st March this year and which has received a good deal of notice. I have obtained confirmation of the facts of many examples quoted in that book, as may be seen from the Official Report of proceedings in your Lordships' House for 1st May this year.

This vast field of experiments under Certificate A is extremely complex and full of difficulties. Within it are 1¼ million mandatory tests for the standardisation of sera, vaccines, medicines or materials required under the Therapeutic Substances Act 1956 and the Diseases of Animals Act 1950. But even in this so-called mandatory field of testing of substances, there seems to be a legislative problem. In 1968, Parliament passed the Medicines Act which, in Sections 31 to 39, provides for clinical tests on animals. There is a list of exemptions which is both long and complicated and which is not material to my point, but the Home Office say that the Therapeutic Substances Act 1956 and the Diseases of Animals Act 1950 will be superseded by the relevant provisions of the Medicines Act 1968—though at present the Department of Health and Social Security cannot say when that will be done. So we have two existing Acts of Parliament which are to be superseded by another Act passed seven years ago, but when that will happen is not known. Presumably this means that in this respect the Medicines Act 1968 is not yet in full operation. But as the law stands at present, if I understand it aright, there is mandatory testing for substances, medicines and so forth, for which some therapeutic value is claimed; otherwise testing is not required by law.

Assuming that 1¼ million experiments are required by law under the Acts I have quoted, what about the remaining 3¼ million experiments referred to in the Home Office Annual Report? What are they? Where no mandatory tests are required, all the rest of them, if they involve pain or cruelty, are protected from the liability to prosecution under the 1911 Act only if they are covered by the necessary licence and certificate granted by the Home Secretary, or on his behalf, under the 1876 Act.

For this purpose, I believe the Home Office have widened the interpretation of the 1876 Act beyond the bounds which are justified. I repeat that no court has been asked to construe the words of the Act, for instance, to protect the testing of women's make-up, or soap or shampoo on living animals. The Home Office have confirmed that oral toxicity tests have been licensed to feed animals on cosmetics. It would be a great mistake to think that the test of a face powder is to powder the face of a rabbit as if it were the face of a woman. It would be equally mistaken to think that soap is tested simply by getting a monkey to wash its hands. These toxicity tests are always made by grossly exaggerated treatments and they in no way compare with normal usage. A shampoo is tested by instilling it into the eyes of a rabbit, not by washing its fur. Strong soap solutions may be rubbed into the backs of shaved rats and left for seven minutes and then the treatment can be repeated up to 12 times. I am quoting from one of the experiments conducted in the Unilever Research Laboratories at Bedford. After repeated treatments, scaling and fissuring of the whole epidermis was common. Over 100 animals were used for this experiment.

To give another example, 10 different commercially obtainable shampoos were instilled into the eyes of 180 New Zealand white rabbits. Particulars of that experiment may be found in the reply to a Question in the Official Report of your Lordships' House on 8th May. To test face cream, one tenth of a millimetre of cream is instilled into the conjunctival sac of the eye of a rabbit. The animal is restrained on a bench and the eyelids held apart. The rabbit is then released. Nine rabbits are used for the testing of each substance. Six of them have their eyes washed shortly after the application, but the remaining three rabbits are not so fortunate. In their case the substance is left in the eyes and damage to the eye is then assessed at intervals of 24, 48 and 72 hours and at intervals of four and seven days afterwards for as long as the injury persists. This is not an isolated test: it is the standard test. It is the universal method of assessing potential eye irritancy of cosmetic products. So they go on, and on, and on.

Can these tests really be called experiments to find an answer to a problem, which the Act requires? Are they lawful under the 1876 Act? Is what is called "quality testing" or "efficiency testing" within the meaning of any reasonable construction of the words of the Act? I quote the Act. Is this— the advancement by new discovery of physiological knowledge, or of knowledge which will be useful for saving or prolonging life or alleviating suffering"? Must men have their deodorants tested upon animals in a painful way to alleviate the human suffering of body odour? I could quote chapter and verse for dozens more really painful ways of making animals suffer for the vanity of women and the fastidiousness of men. They are, in my humble submission, an abuse of the law.

I believe that some phasing out of this type of experiment on live animals should now be seriously considered. Already a movement in the cosmetic industry for "Beauty without cruelty" is gaining ground. Two large cosmetic manufacturers, household names, to whom I spoke this morning no longer merchandise for the home market cosmetic preparations which have needed testing on live animals. One of them writes to say that the basic materials from which cosmetics are made have been available for a good many years now, and one can say that, having stood the test of time, they can be considered safe. The letter continues: On the rare occasion we use a new formulation we test it in our research laboratories on staff who are willing volunteers". Unfortunately there is a growing insistence by overseas buyers, particularly in the United States, upon the application of what is known as the Draise test on living animals. This is a problem. Something is safe for home consumption, but buyers from overseas, or some of them, want a certificate of tests on living animals. Our export trade is involved. Our morality is involved. All I will say is that I believe that here is a matter for serious consideration. If manufacturers feel that they can abandon with confidence testing on living animals for the home market, could we not try to persuade overseas buyers that they can safely take these substances on the same terms? At least I hope that this side of the matter will not escape the Government's attention.

Now I come to nicotine. The tobacco interests can of course pour money into trying to discover more about the effects of smoking and to find some less harmful alternatives. We had a short and interesting debate on the general problem last Monday. We know that smoking tobacco is the great national drug addiction. Let us look at only some of the things now being done under the protection of the 1876 Act to discover—and I quote again: new physiological knowledge or to prolong life or alleviate suffering". The simple act of stopping smoking is not included in the ways of avoiding its harmful effects. This is very sad, but it is true.

One way of finding more information about this subject is to refer to the list of experiments I asked about and which was published in the Official Report of 1st May. I quote squirrel monkeys"— are— implanted with brain electrodes; cannulae implanted in the jugular vein; connected to a ball-valve cemented to skull; monkeys restrained in chairs, and injected intravenously with nicotine to give a blood concentration similar to that obtained by smoking". (Col. 87.) That is an experiment. That does not sound very pleasant. It was done under licence and Certificates A and B. It was done at the Huntingdon Research Centre where they have dogs undergoing tests for tobacco smoking and 91 monkeys as well. We imported 11,500 monkeys into Britain in 1973 solely for scientific research. The devastation of the wildlife of the world is continuing at an alarming rate to satisfy the desire for new physiological knowledge by an affluent Western people.

Now I come to another range of substances promoted commercially and in respect of which licences and certificates are granted for experiments on living animals. Again, my Lords, see the list in the Official Report of 1st May: Building material to replace asbestos finely ground and injected into rats; asbestos also injected".—[Col. 87.] The purpose was described as evaluation of tumour-producing potential. Another also on the list is an insecticide called Gusathion. Thirty-two pure-bred young cocker spaniels had this preparation put into their food. At high poison concentration they developed tremors and muscular weakness. One dog lost one-third in weight, had discharges from both eyes, laboured breathing, occasional bouts of vomiting and jaundice, and then it gave up and died after a week. That was done under Certificate A and by sanction given in Certificate E to use dogs. All experiments on dogs or cats require the approval of the Home Secretary under an additional certificate, Certificate E. We do, of course, love our pets, and dogs and cats were given this special protection under the 1876 Act. A well-known weed killer is sodium chlorate. Pedigree beagle dogs were poisoned by being force-fed with this substance by stomach tube. This was continued for five days—see Official Report of 8th May.

I come to the next area of doubt and difficulty abundant, in my opinion, with abuses under the Act, and that is painful psychological experiments. I will not stop to discuss whether physiological knowledge in 1876 can be regarded as including psychological knowledge in 1975. In this, as in many other respects, words can mean what one wants them to mean. Nevertheless, this sector of animal experimentation troubled the Littlewood Committee very much indeed. The Littlewood Committee were appointed in 1963 by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor (who has told me that he regrets not being able to be present in your Lordships' House today), and took two years to go into all these matters thoroughly. I would remind your Lordships that to terrify or infuriate an animal is an offence under the Protection of Animals Act 1911. If undertaken on licence and certificate under the 1876 Act it is not. Experiments to induce stress and to observe behaviour under stress are increasing. The Littlewood Committee said that in their view every proposal to perform experiments designed to induce stress should be referred to an advisory committee for consideration before the experiments were undertaken. That, my Lords, has never been done—10 wasted years.

I will not trouble your Lordships' House with many further examples but will refer at any rate to two. At Hull University the effect of fear on exploratory behaviour was assessed by recording the activity of rats in a Y maze. A Y maze is like the letter Y. Half the rats received electric shocks prior to placement in the maze. In their case it was observed that they had reduced exploratory behaviour. An experiment was carried out at the medical research centre at Cambridge to discover the effects of 13 days' maternal separation of infant Rhesus monkeys compared with those of shorter and repeated separations. Two twice-separated infants died before they were a year old and no definite cause of death was found. Infant monkeys separated for 13 days from their mothers gave more distress calls and showed a greater depression of locomotor and play behaviour than did the infants whose mothers had been removed for only six days.

I am making no comment, my Lords. The Home Office were not even sure whether this experiment was calculated to give pain within the meaning of the Act. The experiment went ahead without a certificate of approval and then news of it leaked out and, subsequently, the professor who did the experiment asked for a certificate to be granted retrospectively—and it was. In my submission this was ultra vires. There is no provision in the Act for the granting of a licence or a certificate retrospectively. Sad to relate, there are some horrifying brain operations being conducted in this new field of the study of behaviour. I am not going to say that they are abuses of the Act, though I do say that this new field of behavioural science needs the closest attention. It includes a wide and increasing range of psycho-active drugs and I think it is deeply regrettable that no Government have acted on the cautionary words of the Littlewood Committee, who wanted more to be learned about this subject before further experiments went on.

The Littlewood Committee said, in paragraphs 459 and 460 of their Report, that they were advised that enough was known of the mechanism of stress to justify very critical examination of further proposals to set up analogues to human stress for confirmatory study. I have not burdened your Lordships with even a summary of the 80 or so recommendations of the Littlewood Report. I believe that some have been implemented by administrative action, many others have not;some require legislation. Both Governments have left the legislative side of Littlewood severely alone. They have adopted an attitude of studied indifference. They have no proposals to make and nothing to add to what they have already said. Letters appear to emanate from the most uninspired section of the Home Office. Some of us have tried in another place by Private Members' Bills to make some impression upon the stubbornness of the Home Office. Our Bills are talked out and the Government willingly see them go, frustrate action by others and do nothing themselves. Research establishments go over to the defensive at the first word of critical inquiry.

As the sponsors of the 1876 Act so rightly said nearly 100 years ago: This Bill is a revolt against the claim of science to be a sovereign State. That is the challenge that I am making this afternoon. Researchers and experimenters, public or otherwise, are accountable to the public and to Parliament. What do I propose? I propose, first, that the Government should undertake to prepare legislation on many of the recommendations of the Littlewood Report which are still outstanding; secondly, support my proposals for the setting up of a Select Committee of your Lordships' House to examine the Littlewood Report in the light of current conditions and other relevant matters; thirdly, and meanwhile—and this is the speediest action that could be taken now—follow the welcome reconstitution of the Advisory Committee recently announced by enlarging its functions, giving it a more positive role and some initiative and the right to inspect and advise upon anything relevant to its task. Fancy calling it an Advisory Committee when it has met only twice in five years, simply because it cannot say anything about anything unless something is referred to it by the Secretary of State. When he chooses not to refer, the Advisory Committee is so much waste paper. The last time it met was in September of last year. Of all the dogs in this sorry tale the one we need most is a watchdog, and this Advisory Committee would be that.

Fourthly, we want more information. Littlewood said that we ought to have it; there should be less secrecy. What is there to hide? We have the right to know. We are not all over-sentimental extremists. The Home Office return under the Act is quite inadequate; it is the barest summary. It gives a lot of figures but hides the truth. I would say, "Let us have some responsible documentary films so that people know what research is all about". Fifthly, there is the matter of alternatives to living animals. I ask the Government to give practical encouragement and support to the study of alternatives to living animals. There is not enough push behind the effort now being made I think entirely by voluntary bodies, notably the Dowding Fund, the work of the two Heggarty's in FRAME (the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments) and the Humane Research Trust—from which I see there is a letter in The Times newspaper today. My Lords, in conclusion I make an earnest appeal to my noble friend to make some favourable response to what I believe is a strong, indeed an overwhelming, prima facie case for closer scrutiny and investigation. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

Baroness WHITE

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, may I ask whether he would not think it proper to explain to the House why over the past few weeks he has tabled a series of Questions mentioning specifically, and by name, one research centre—the Huntingdon Research Centre—when, to the best of my belief, he has never visited it and to my certain knowledge he has never contacted its Director, Mr. Alastair Worden? Has he consulted any member of the scientific committee which supervises the scientific work at the Centre and which includes the President of the Royal Society of Physicians, and the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and does he not think that it is unfortunate to use his position in this House to make insinuations which he has not, today at any rate, sought to justify?

Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY

My Lords, I am not aware that I have made insinuations. The answer to my noble friend is that I have quoted from reports and returns rendered by that Research Centre.

3.28 p.m.

Lord SANDYS

My Lords, it is indeed a source of great encouragement to the whole of the animal welfare field that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, has thought fit to put down this Motion this afternoon and to restrict its terms in a very precise manner to the working of the 1876 Act. My credentials, if you like, for speaking this afternoon are these: I have in the past taken a very great interest in this subject and I spoke in support of the Export of Animals Research Bill introduced into your Lordships' House on 30th January, 1969, by my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard. I further spoke in a debate which I think is the only debate on the Littlewood Report which your Lordships' House has had up to this time. It was on an Unstarred Question on 27th January 1970 regarding experiments on animals. My Lords, those are slim enough credentials, nevertheless I think I may establish before your Lordships an interest over a number of years in this subject.

There is one past Member of your Lordships' House who was held in deep affection by your Lordships, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and I wish to quote from a personal letter which I received from him some years ago. In regard to the 1876 Act he said: Dear Sandys, Nearly a century ago Frances Power Cobb drew the attention of some prominent members of society to the painful and often pointless experiments that were then being carried out on some hundreds of animals every year. Her memorandum calling for a halt drew support from the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, Cardinal Manning, Jowett, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, and many other distinguished persons.

This led to the enactment of the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, regarded by Lord Shaftesbury as a first inadequate step. Today some 5 million animals, their welfare supervised by 13 inspectors, are used and disposed of annually like paper tissues, and there has been no second step. There are many people who feel that licensed researchers can be trusted to use their powers with discretion and humanity. After reading in The Times of 26th August 1969 that animals at a Government research station had been exposed for five hours at a time for three months on end to the distressing effects of CS gas in concentrations a thousand times greater than that required to disperse a crowd, we cannot share their confidence.

The House owes much to the late Lord Silk in for earlier debates. However, think that the efforts of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who has been referred to this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, and who set up the Littlewood Committee on 23rd May, 1963, deserve our special interest and attention, because it is the Littlewood Committee Report which sets out so many of the recommendations which successive Governments have failed to enact in full. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, said quite definitely that some of the recommendations have been carried out. Indeed they have, but no fewer than 83 recommendations were set out in that Report. Therefore, I should like to draw the attention of your Lordships to certain problems.

From the legislative point of view, one should look at paragraph 242 of the Report which asked the very leading question, what should be the scope of the law? Certainly the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, demonstrated to me, although he may not have demonstrated it to those with a professional legal training, that there is a conflict between the 1876 Act and its use and the working of the 1911 Act. Nevertheless, it is true that in our debate this afternoon we are concerned with the earlier Act, namely, the 1876 Act, and I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to certain deficiencies in that Act.

In this particular regard I venture to draw your Lordships' attention to paragraph 453 of the Littlewood Report. This is particularly important in regard to Crown establishments, because the 1876 Act does not apply to the Crown. Paragraph 453 of the Littlewood Report says this: It will be evident from Chapter 10 that a substantial volume of research is carried out by Crown establishments. This situation was not foreseen when the Act was passed. We have established that Government Departments have fully complied with the requirements of the Act, although they have not been legally subject to it. Surely this is a matter which requires urgent attention. The reconstituted advisory committee, to which attention has already been drawn, will have a large number of matters to attend to. Nevertheless, it is only right to point out that official research, which is mentioned in some detail in paragraph 170 of the Report, is of special importance. At the end of 1963, which was prior to the Littlewood Report, the total number of Government Departments included the Public Health Laboratory Service Board, the Medical and Agricultural Research Councils, the Regional Hospital Boards, and the boards of governors of teaching hospitals. Those who were responsible numbered 261 out of a general total of 556. Therefore, as an approximation only, one can say that the Crown establishments or official bodies have at least a 50 per cent. interest in the total number of experiments which are conducted.

The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, referred to the definition of an "experiment". This is of particular significance in conducting our debate. My view is that one can take one of a number of definitions. However, the Little-wood Report quotes this definition, which differs from the definition quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. Littlewood used the Shorter Oxford Dictionary definition, which says that an "experiment" is: A procedure adopted in uncertainty whether it will answer the purpose. … An action or operation undertaken in order to discover something unknown, to test a hypothesis or establish or illustrate some known truth. If that definition were used in the interpretation of the law, especially in regard to the administration of the 1876 Act, I am perfectly certain that a number of those quite horrifying experiments which were referred to in detail by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, would be subject to a great deal of censure in the courts.

The next definition with which we must concern ourselves is the definition of pain, to which attention was drawn in the Littlewood Report. Pain in animals is referred to in many different places in the Report, in particular in paragraph 88. But perhaps three degrees of pain are of special importance. They believed that these could be defined and should be granted particular significance in courts of law. The 1876 Act did not define degrees of pain, and this is the subject of considerable censure by one body which I think we ought to commend; namely, the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, a body which is very well known in this field. It was the only body which drew attention to the fact that there has been very little definition of pain.

In paragraph 185, the Littlewood Report describes the wording of the 1876 Act as "verbose and confusing" and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare strongly recommend its rewording. That is part only of the whole story. Nevertheless, it is very well worth while to put on public record the recommendation of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare. They recommended: Pain condition should be reworded as follows:

  1. (1) Each licensee shall take effective precautions to prevent, or reduce to a minimum, any pain or other distress or discomfort in the animals used.
  2. (2) Every animal which is suffering discomfort which is likely to endure shall be painlessly killed as soon as the experiment has been completed.
  3. (3) In no case shall any animal be subjected to severe pain which endures or is likely to endure."
It was also suggested that the condition should be embodied in law as a cardinal feature of the whole pattern of control. This is really at the very centre of the question of certification and I think it is greatly to the credit of that body. As I have stressed earlier it was the only body who provided its own views and supplemented them with drafting Amendments.

I turn now to the question of mandatory tests. Those of us who have worked in the Department of Health and Social Security are well aware of the two Acts which the proposer of this Motion referred to—the Therapeutic Substances Act 1956 and the Medicines Act 1968. I think the noble Lord, Lord Houghton. suggested that the Department had, if not legislation on the stocks, at least something coming forward. So one of my first questions—which I hope I address correctly to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, because I have no doubt that the Home Office is in touch with the DHS in this matter—is this: is there legislation, in draft or about to be in draft, at the present moment which would give currency to what the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has said?

With regard to the recommendations of the Littlewood Report, I am sorry to be boring about it but, having listened with close interest and horror to what the noble Lord described in the form of experiments, I do not think we shall spend our time in any way ill if we look at the recommendations. There are many which require legislation and there are others which do not. The two which the Littlewood Committee especially referred to were the reinforcement of the Inspectorate and the reconstitution of the Advisory Committee. I hope the Advisory Committee is now sufficiently reinforced, because a strong Inspectorate and an expert Advisory Committee will have a major part to play in this whole field.

Nevertheless, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the reinforcement of the Inspectorate. As your Lordships are aware, only 13 inspectors have been referred to, and my second question to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is this: Is it correct that the numbers have not been increased, for reasons known to the Home Office, or is there at present a recruiting intention to increase the number of inspectors in this field? It would be helpful to know those two facts and, if they are not at present known, I wonder whether the House would perhaps devote time through the usual channels to a further debate on this subject.

I had not intended to speak at the same length as the proposer of the Motion; nevertheless, I have spent about half that time and I should like to end on a positive note. Reference has been made to alternatives to vivisection and also to the possibility of using these alternatives for the very large number of experiments not specially concerned with medical research; for instance, those concerned with beauty aids, gardening aids, and a hundred and one household, industrial and other products in which animals are used in experiments. For a number of years cell and tissue culture as an alternative to vivisection has been a fact in this field. I cannot stress too strongly my personal view, which is that the researches in this field have been more beneficial possibly than almost any other in reducing the necessity for vivisection.

It was Professor S. T. Aygun, a Turkish professor, who spoke at the World Congress Against Vivisection in August 1967, and his address I have in my hand. It left no doubt in the minds of his audience at that time—and, certainly, his published papers since then have only gone to reinforce it—that cell and tissue culture has a great future and a great part to play in the testing of substances. I think there is only one further comment I should like to make on the 1876 Act before leaving it, and that is in regard to the comment of one of your Lordships on the Act with which I beg to disagree. On 30th January 1969, the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury said this: I commend to your Lordships the structure of the 1876 Act. It is a good Act; it is well drafted. The fact that after 92 years it has never been necessary to take it to Court to find out what it means is a point in its favour."—[Official Report, 30/1/69, col. 1346.] I dispute those words and I believe there is a great opportunity for legislative change.

Lord PLATT

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, as I know it is now the intention to continue with the Statement, I should like to ask him for clarification of one point in his most interesting speech. It may be due to momentary inattention on my part, but I think he said something like 50 per cent. of the experiments were done in Crown Departments rather than university departments. If that is so where do all the commercial experiments come in?

Lord SANDYS

My Lords, it was not a momentary inattention on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Platt; it was in fact a mathematical inaccuracy on my part. I think it only fair to say that the table set out in the Littlewood Report has failed to give a precise representation. Nevertheless, the figures which I gave were of both Crown establishments and official university establishments.