§ Mr. BestTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps the Government is taking to reduce the number of animals used for experimentation in the UK. [132230]
§ Caroline FlintUnder the Animals (Scientific Procedures) act 1986 Act the Home Office, and its counterpart in Northern Ireland (the Department of Health, Social Security and Public Safety), license the use of animals for scientific purposes where there is no non-animal alternative, and then only when both the number of animals and their suffering are minimised. This reflects the principles of the 3Rs—replacement, reduction and refinement.
As the regulator of the use of live animals in scientific procedures the Government is demand-led—it has no control over the number of project licence applications which it receives. While we must seek to minimise the number of animals used in particular programmes of work, we cannot therefore influence the overall amount of animal research and testing which takes place—that is determined by many other factors, including the economic climate and global trends in scientific endeavour. There are current developments—such as 685W advances in the use that can be made of genetically modified animals-which may lead in coming years to more rather than fewer animals used overall.
The Government fully supports and encourages development and promotion of the 3Rs in a number of ways, and additional impetus has been given to its efforts to that end by the related recommendations recently put forward by the House of Lords Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures. In the longer term we must rely for any further significant reduction in animal use largely on the scientific community's own continuing efforts to develop, validate and accept non-animal alternative methods.