Westminster Hall briefing: Animal experiments

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ePolitix.com reports on Tuesday's Westminster Hall debate on statistics on scientific procedures on living animals.

The debate was held following a review conducted by Lord Davidson, published in November 2007. The report found that animal research statistics in the UK should be reduced to existing, more limited, EU levels.

Bill Etherington (Lab, Sunderland North) expressed concerns that impending European legislation on animal welfare, a draft animal experiments directive, would dumb-down existing UK legislation.

Etherington said that, in terms of UK statistics regarding animal testing, the last twelve years had yielded a twenty one per cent increase in the number of procedures reported. He questioned the reasoning for such an occurrence, labelled it “totally unacceptable by any standard’’. He rebuked claims that more test cases were the result of speedy medical advancements which were necessitating greater experimentation.

Etherington claimed that government had failed to “control the system”. The sector was too secretive, unrestricted by Freedom of Information legislation and liable to administrative inefficiencies where duplicate experiments were likely being carried out, he argued.

Etherington questioned the veracity of the government’s present position, for a ‘reduction, replacement and refinement’ approach to animal-testing, which seeks alternatives solutions to a necessary evil. He called for a “step change” in the way the issue is being handled.

David Amess (Con, Southend West), chairman of the all-party parliamentary FRAME group on animal welfare, stated his similar concern that animal welfare statistics in Europe are inadequate.

He cited the group’s opposition to Lord Davidson’s proposal. He also maintained that UK statistics should continue to be collected on an annual basis, as well as committed to transparency in the realm of recording and collating animal testing figures. He added that the new European Directive had some loopholes which could provide for less substantial statistical coverage on animal testing.

John Butterfill (Con, Bournemouth West) argued that there are "defects in the law [regarding animal testing] as it presently stands". He accepted that some animal research may be governed by commercial confidentiality, there is still a lack of transparency across the sector. But Butterfill did acknowledge that the FRAME group was making good progress in trying to bring respectability and openness into the domain of animal research.

Phil Willis (Lib Dem, Harrogate and Knaresborough) agreed that FRAME was doing a good job but questioned the entire motion of the debate: he was sceptical of the suggestion that by improving, opening-up and better scrutinising the statistics which are being published on animal testing you directly see a reduction in the animal suffering which is being inflicted as a result of experimentation.

However, he accepted that animal research in the UK was conducted to very high standards. He also stated that, given these standards, the UK should be seen as the template which neighbours in Europe should be seeking to model. He advocated that the impending European directive should be moulded to ensure that the rest of Europe conforms to British practices.

Willis said that he would not support a total ban on the testing of animals, given its role in previous medical breakthroughs. But he suggested that a greater transparency should be brought to bear in better scrutinising the efficacy of future proceedings.

Kerry McCarthy (Lab, Bristol East) argued that more coherent and transparent statistics on animal research could potentially identify areas in which duplicate tests were being carried out, for which data had already been collected and for which animals were unnecessarily being experimented upon.

Meg Hillier (Lab/Co-op, Hackney South and Shoreditch), parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Home Office, provided the government’s response. She stated that the general cross-party consensus on animal research was a good thing and that this should be conveyed to the European Union in providing a united front for the exemplary British viewpoint of accepting testing where necessary but only under the highest, welfare-friendly standards. She also cautioned against the prospect of Britain’s high standards being diluted by the European directive.

Hillier proceeded by providing a general account of the government’s position on the subject. Firstly, she cited various medical advancements, in the realms of depression, kidney dialysis and the polio vaccination, which had relied on animal testing and which reinforced the logic for its continuance.

She assured the MPs that the government was not seeking to hide anything from the public domain and that it was supportive of enhancing the transparency in animal testing and research. Since 2005, the government has actively published on the internet the various abstracts of project licenses which have been granted for animal research, she explained. She stated that the government had "no plans to reduce scope of figures we are going to collect – we are not trying to hide anything".

Lastly, Hillier provided an insight into the UK statistics being discussed. She noted that, in the case of genetically-related experiments, animal breeding was logged as a procedure in the statistics. But she added that such breeding rarely caused animal suffering. She also added that in 2007 there was only one case of animal research conducted for the purposes of household products and that no animal testing was conducted in 2007 for the purposes of the cosmetics industry.

Whilst Hillier accepted that more research needed to be done to see if unnecessary experiments were being duplicated, she concluded that government was definitely not trying to hide things from the public domain other than where the safety of scientists at laboratories could be jeopardised by animal activists.