HC Deb 11 December 1990 vol 182 cc348-9W
Mr. Ron Davies

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many scientific procedures 'were carried out on animals during 1989 in each of England, Scotland and Wales.

Mrs. Rumbold

Very full information is published annually in the "Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals: Great Britain" (1989: Cm. 1152). To disaggregate these figures nationally might risk individual establishments being identified and the threat of violent attack is so real that we take care to protect confidentiality.

Mr. Ron Davies

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how the likely benefits of a scientific procedure are assessed when a project licence application under section 5(4) of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 is considered; and whether any assessment is made of the value of the products and use;

(2) how many project licences have been issued in each of the last three years for the testing of cosmetics., and whether any assessment is made during the examination of the licence application of the utility of the product being tested.

Mrs. Rumbold

Section 5(4) of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 requires that, before a project licence is granted, the likely adverse effects on the animals concerned must be weighed against the benefit likely to accrue from the proposed work. A number of factors contribute towards such assessments which must necessarily be subjective, and these are set out in chapter 4 of the Home Office "Guidance on the Operation of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986" (1990: HC 182).

As for project licences for the regulatory testing of substances, including cosmetics, the central benefit is ensuring that such substances do not present a hazard in manufacture or transport and are safe for use by the consumer. Since the Act came into force in 1987, a total of six project licences have been issued for the safety testing of cosmetics.

Mr. Ron Davies

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any plans to accept any of the recommendations contained in the recent RSPCA/FRAME report on the use of non-human primates as laboratory animals in Britain.

Mrs. Rumbold

We share the underlying concerns of this report that non-human primates should not be used in scientific procedures unnecessarily and that where their use can be justified scientifically they should be adequately housed and cared for.

The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 recog-nises the special position of non-human primates and section 5(6) requires that they may be used only where no other species are suitable for a proposed programme of research. Government policy on the use of non-human primates was set out fully in response to a question on 16 November 1987 by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) at columns 386–88. The special requirements of such animals are set out in the Home Office code of practice for the housing and care of laboratory animals (1989: HC 107).

As the RSPCA/FRAME report makes clear, much of the work covered by the survey was conducted before the special controls of the 1986 Act came into force and before the recommendations for housing and care were published in the code of practice.