Animal Testing

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 736578 relating to animal testing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on phasing out animal experiments in medical research, for which Animal Free Research provides the secretariat. I am a long-time campaigner in this area, as well as on many other topics relating to animal welfare. It is important to me and many others that animals are replaced in research as soon as possible.

The petition, created by Maria Iriart from Camp Beagle, is titled: “End testing on dogs and other animals for development of products for human use”. It reads:

“Many tests on dogs and other animals cause unimaginable suffering. They can translate poorly into effective treatments and cures for human diseases or provide safety and efficacy data that is not relevant to humans. Over 90% of drugs that appear safe and effective in animals do not go on to receive FDA, USA approval.

In 2023, 2,605,528 animals were used for the first time in scientific procedures incl. 2,477 dogs & 1,815 primates. Animals are bred & housed in bleak conditions and then used in tests that can cause immense physical and psychological suffering. We think government-led action is required to radically divert funding and evolve policy to implement the use of existing and the development of new Non-Animal Methodologies (NAMS). We believe the current testing paradigm is failing both animals and humans and is holding back medical advances.”

The petition has attracted almost 121,000 signatures—that is a great achievement, and it is good to see Maria in the Gallery today—of which 121 are from my constituency.

I know that people care deeply about this topic and I have received many emails from constituents, as well as from members of the public living in other constituencies. In the past week, many of them have referenced the exposés in The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mirror, which showed incredibly disturbing footage of what is going on in UK laboratories. In particular, there were shocking images of long-tailed macaques being force-fed new weight-loss drugs and suffering from extreme distress. It is horrible to think about the pain and torture that innocent animals have to be put through so that humans can be helped to lose weight. It is important to note that those images being circulated are from laboratory sites that are regulated and operating within the law. There are more experiments that I would like to talk about in greater detail, such as testing of anti-inflammation drugs on beagles and of skin treatments on pigs. However, the content is so distressing that I feel it is too disturbing to share during the debate.

We are a nation of animal lovers—my very first Westminster Hall debate was on animal welfare—although, as a constituent pointed out to me, if we love animals so much, we should not need an animal welfare strategy. I welcome the Government’s animal welfare strategy and the move towards ending testing on animals, but does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that beagles are used because they are placid is utterly heartbreaking, and that any move to expedite the end of animal testing would be welcomed by many of our constituents?

I agree with both my hon. Friend’s points. It is important that this issue is dealt with sooner rather than later, and I will say more about that later.

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and making her points very clearly. Like many Members, I have had hundreds of emails encouraging me to take part in the debate, and there is particular concern about the use of dogs. Does she support the calls for Herbie’s law, to stop animal testing by 2035?

I absolutely support Herbie’s law and, as I mentioned, the APPG is supported by Animal Free Research, which hopes to implement it. I agree 100% with the hon. Member.

Another extremely cruel test is the forced swim test, for which there are still three licences granted in the UK, lasting until 2028. The Government’s “Replacing animals in science” strategy states specifically:

“The test has limited scientific validity, particularly its translational relevance to human mental health disorders. Animal behaviour in the FST also lacks information on treatment latency and varies across strains and protocols. Therefore, we would expect the Home Office Regulator’s default position to be that the FST does not pass the harm-benefit test required under”

the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. To me and many others, it would make complete sense to cancel those licences immediately.

I commend the petition’s signatories for bringing this debate to us. I also commend my hon. Friend, with whom I have been in many debates over the past two years, for all her hard work and advocacy in this area. Does she agree that, although the Government’s strategy to phase out the use of animals in medical research is a very good thing, it is just a step in the right direction on the journey to phasing out the use of animals in medical experimentation completely? Will she also join me in encouraging Members to take forward Herbie’s law as a private Member’s Bill in the new Session, as I have done over the past two years?

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. I absolutely support the implementation of Herbie’s law sooner rather than later. I welcome the strategy, and I will say more about it later.

A year ago tomorrow, I led a debate on a very similar petition entitled “Ban immediately the use of dogs in scientific and regulatory procedures”, which was also created by Maria Iriart. It is clear to me and many others that neither the public nor parliamentarians are letting this issue go.

The whole Petitions Committee, including me, is grateful to the hon. Lady, who is making a very good speech. Although we all care about this matter hugely, I have found from the emails I have received that the younger generation is increasingly unwilling to tolerate this testing at all. I welcome that and find it fascinating, and I see it as a very good shift in society. Does she agree?

I fully agree. I think it is really important that younger people take this cause forward. Earlier today, when I went out to speak to representatives from Camp Beagle, I met a young woman—she is 10—who is really keen that we get it moved forward. I thought that was great.

In the petition debate last year and in others since, I have referenced a 1927 debate on the Dogs Protection Bill, in which the surgeon Sir Lambert Ormsby was quoted as saying:

“Experiments on dogs may now be discontinued. All that can be found out by physiological experiments for application to human beings has long since been discovered, and repetitions are unnecessary and cruel.”—[Official Report, 29 April 1927; Vol. 205, c. 1237.]

It is really sad that nearly 100 years later, dogs continue to be used in this cruel and outdated way.

I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. This is a huge issue in my constituency. Does she agree that, given the grave ethical concern that animals used in testing endure immense pain, distress and confinement, and the fact that the scientific validity of such testing is increasingly in doubt, it is time that we prioritised human alternatives and invested in advanced technology to replace animal testing?

I thank the hon. Member for his comments, and I agree with everything that he said. I will say a bit more about that later on.

I thank the hon. Member for her passionate speech. My constituents are proud of the UK’s reputation for high animal welfare standards, but they struggle to square that with the continued scale of animal testing and the lack of pace of change—as she highlighted, it has been slow for nearly 100 years now. Does she agree that the real question is not whether we can move away from animal testing, but how quickly we are prepared to do so?

I fully agree with everything the hon. Member said. I will go on to say more about that.

The petition refers specifically to dogs, as well as other animals that are used in testing. In 2024, 2.64 million procedures in British laboratories used animals—every minute of every day, five animals are used in research in the United Kingdom—over 16,000 experiments were carried out on specially protected species, including cats, dogs, horses and monkeys, and 1,651 dogs were used in experiments.

The hon. Member is being very generous with her time. Dogs have noticeable physiological differences from humans—different enzymes, different gastric pH—which leads to the vast majority of drugs that are tested on them failing to translate to humans. Does she agree, therefore, that the Government should commit to ending the use of dogs, specifically, in testing for human use and provide greater funding for alternatives that are coming through, such as organs on chips?

I agree wholeheartedly with everything the hon. Member said. I will speak more about organ on a chip and the need to move more quickly towards phasing out animals in research, but there is an opportunity to phase out dogs almost immediately.

It is important to note that figures released in the Home Office annual reports cover only animals protected by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, and that individual animals can be used many times in different tests. However, the statistics count only the first time an animal is used in an experiment. The real number of experiments every year is likely much higher, as that data is not captured.

UK law, in the form of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, already recognises what we all know: that animals have emotions and feelings. The suffering caused to animals subjected to testing is a clear ethical problem, and the effectiveness of the experiments also calls into question the need for the obvious suffering, torture and painful death that many of them endure. Over 92% of drugs fail in human clinical trials after passing animal trials, and the failure rate increases to 99.6% for Alzheimer’s disease drugs. To quote Animal Free Research UK:

“Animals like monkeys don’t naturally develop Alzheimer’s, or live long enough to study ageing in the same way that humans experience it, so these outdated methods are simply not giving us the answers we need.”

I thank my hon. Friend for her great speech and her great work in this area, and I thank all the residents of my constituency who have signed the petition. I was pleased by the Government’s announcement of a long-term road map to reduce and phase out animal testing in scientific research, with key milestones for the abolition of specific tests, as my hon. Friend said, including an end to skin and eye irritation and skin sensitisation testing on animals this year. Does she agree that we should speed up the timetable as much as possible so that we can end animal testing at the earliest opportunity?

I agree with everything my hon. Friend said, and I will say more about that.

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. A conflict is sometimes presented between our understandable concerns about animal welfare and good science, but, as she set out, there is no such conflict. The really heartbreaking, frustrating thing is that many of the ongoing experiments that cause animals to suffer are far less rigorous than some of the alternatives that we already know work better but are not yet regulated in the same way. Does she agree that the Government’s road map fires the starting gun to make sure we have regulated alternatives in place as quickly as possible? Will she join me in urging the Government to move as quickly as possible so we can get better, more robust science and protect animals? It is an “and”, not an “or” or an “either”.