My Lords, I will come on to the SI in detail in a moment, but I begin by reminding the House of a Labour manifesto commitment that is central to this area of work.
The Labour Government have planned to champion robust and world-leading animal welfare standards. On Tuesday 11 November, the Government published our animals in science strategy, a joint effort led by my noble friend Lord Vallance and supported by my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock and me. The policy statement was to phase out animal use in science, as announced by a Written Ministerial Statement. This policy has been welcomed by animal welfare groups, industry and academia. We have been clear that this can be done only at a pace that scientific advances allow, and that in some areas it will be essential to continue the use of animals in science for specific purposes.
It is therefore critical—this is where I return to the SI—that, although the Government’s direction of travel is to find alternatives to animals in science and phase out their use, we ensure at the same time that we get growth potential from this business in the world at large. The protection of those critical resources, while we try to reduce and eliminate their use where possible, is therefore essential. The purpose of the SI is to better protect facilities that are indeed essential for developing treatments for human and animal diseases. That is why, although the government manifesto’s direction of travel is clear and will, I hope, be met, the life sciences industry remains integral to this country. It is central to health resilience, to pandemic preparedness and to capabilities in this area. In my view, recent experience underscores why we must be prepared at all times to respond to such a crisis.
This Government want the UK to become a global beacon for scientific discovery. The life sciences sector employs over 350,000 people and generates £150 billion-worth of turnover annually. The sector is essential to the development of new treatments and crucial to the safety testing of new medicines and vaccines. No one knows that better than my noble friend Lord Vallance, who dealt with such issues during the response to the Covid-19 outbreak; its contribution in that instance cannot be overstated.
When it comes to the SI, recent protest activity has deliberately targeted the life science sector, threatening the UK’s sovereign capability to produce vaccines, medicines and therapies, and has disrupted supply chains that are, in my view, indispensable to research and national health protection. As a result of that disruption, work that is of significant benefit to society is, I am afraid, placed at risk. It is therefore incumbent on the Government of the day to act without delay.
That brings me directly to the subject of our debate today. The legislation before the House will address the issue that I have outlined by amending Section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023 to add the life sciences sector to the list of key national infrastructure. This will make it a criminal offence to deliberately or recklessly disrupt life sciences infrastructure or interfere with its use or operation. Anyone convicted of this offence will, obviously, have been arrested by the police and potentially warned by them, and the CPS will have gone through those charges, but anyone who ultimately faces that conviction will face a penalty of up to 12 months’ imprisonment, a fine or both. In turn, this change will strengthen the police’s ability to, in my view, respond to disruptive protest activity that is undermining our national health resilience.
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However, it is currently a legal commitment that we can undertake that type of research. It is backed up by legal, heavy regulation. Until that is achieved, the immediate and critical issue remains that the sector is being targeted by protesters who oppose current clinical research methods. Disruption to the industry risks weakening the country’s ability to act in a medical crisis. If protest activity continues to interfere with essential research, it will seriously undermine the UK’s readiness for the next pandemic. That is why today the Government are taking the proportionate step to reduce supply-chain interference, to protect the sector’s ability to operate in the UK, to support the UK’s pandemic preparedness and national health resilience, and to allow this sector to operate while our strategy is put in place.
To conclude, I state again: this order does not stop anybody peacefully, lawfully protesting. That is a cornerstone of our democracy. This Government respect and revere that right and we will always defend it. But, equally, our approach must be appropriately balanced and that means in this context that we must take into account the duty on us to protect what is, in our opinion, key national infrastructure. Where disruption threatens medical progress and places in jeopardy our national capability to prepare for and respond to a public health emergency, this Government must act. The only reasonable response is the one we are taking today.
There can be no denying that innovation, crisis response and life-saving care are worthy and vital pursuits; so is the right to protest. But as a Government, it is our responsibility to ensure that both those pursuits can continue unimpeded. I look forward to hearing about the noble Baroness’s amendment, but I believe the case the Government have made is both fair and proportionate, and I commend the Motion to the House.
As an amendment to the above motion, to leave out from “that” and to insert “this House declines to approve the draft Public Order Act 2023 (Interference With Use or Operation of Key National Infrastructure) Regulations 2025 on the basis that they are legislative overreach; they extend the definition of “critical national infrastructure” beyond its appropriate meaning; the practical need for such an extension has not been adequately justified; they represent a further restriction on the democratic right to peaceful protest; and sufficient steps to end animal testing have not been taken.”
My Lords, I thank the Minister for both outlining the statutory instrument and explaining my amendment to decline to approve it. I am going to structure my speech in an unconventional manner, starting with the points that I know the fewest people in this Chamber will agree with, moving backwards through the order in the amendment to the point that I believe that most people in this Chamber, particularly the Benches to my right, might be persuaded to agree with. I will finish not on points about animal testing or the right to protest, but on the basic constitutional understanding that statutory instruments are a way in which the law can be illegitimately extended well beyond the original intentions manifested when it was democratically debated, pored over and scrutinised, in both your Lordships’ House and the other place. This statutory instrument is a notable and dangerous piece of legislative overreach.
I start with animal testing, the phasing out of which, as the amendment says, is not going nearly quickly enough under the replacing animals in science strategy. Why do I argue that this is too slow? It is for morality and for efficacy. There is public revulsion, yes, which results in widespread peaceful protest about the treatment of more than 2.5 million animals a year used in medical research here. More than that, there is a recognition of the inadequacy of animal testing, the “valley of death” that sees drugs apparently showing promise in animals failing to work in humans. Animal Free Research UK reports that that is the case for over 92% of drugs, and that failure makes up 75% of the cost of drug development. As an entire edition of the journal Frontiers in Immunology published in 2024 points out, there are 90 million years of evolution between humans and rodents.
However, there are alternatives. Our Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Vallance of Balham, said last November:
I did not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about Just Stop Oil blocking motorways and I do not agree with her now about animal testing, which must be carefully controlled but is still essential, but I come to the same conclusion as she does for the constitutional reason that she gave as the last of her indictments.
I strongly agree with the Government about the importance of the life sciences sector. I was chairman of Imperial College; I know a bit about it. The point where I disagree with the Government, and strongly agree with the noble Baroness, is on whether a research laboratory can properly be designated as key national infrastructure under the 2023 Act.
Section 7 of the Act makes it an offence to interfere with the
“use or operation of any key national infrastructure”.
It defines key national infrastructure rather precisely, as the Minister read out. There are eight categories; seven are to do with transport and the eighth, rather oddly, is about the production of newspapers—presumably the connection is communication. Section 7(7) of the Act permits the Secretary of State to add further infrastructure. Hence this SI.
In all our debates, no one ever mentioned laboratories. When we were passing this Act, animal welfare did not come up. We thought we were dealing with oil, gas, rail, road and air, because that is what Ministers and the Bill said. If we were thinking of what extra—
Does the noble Lord accept that proper animal research goes on well beyond laboratories, in fields and many other places? He underestimates the issue in considering laboratories; it is far wider than that.
I thank the noble Lord, but I think I will stick to my line of argument. I do not think we discussed laboratories. Hansard shows that we did not.
It is important to remember that the demonstrator outside the factory or laboratory is already covered by the Act because he is obstructing the road. He is probably already covered by the Public Order Act 1986, but he is certainly covered by the 2023 Act. Road transport infrastructure is right at the top of the list of “key national infrastructure”. This statutory instrument will add the laboratory or the factory itself, not access to it, and deem it national infrastructure that is key to the nation. That is quite a stretch. If the pharmaceutical industry is key national infrastructure, what about food production or distribution, the NHS or radio and television transmitters? All three cases seem more plausible than a life sciences factory or laboratory.
I agree with the noble Baroness that this statutory instrument would set a dangerous precedent. It is in the spirit of Igor Judge, whom we miss so much, that I register my unease. Unlike Igor, I cannot add an apposite reference to Thomas Cromwell, but he always warned that the temptation for the Executive is always to push the legislative boundaries. I have worked in the Executive; I know that he was right. This instrument pushes the boundaries too far, and we should push back.
My Lords, I declare an interest as having been in this House a little longer than the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I have great respect for many of the things that she has said, and we have worked together on other Bills. Over 50 years, I have continued to do animal research and held a licence under the Home Office. My laboratory, where I still have some work going on, uses animals and will have to continue to do so for the research it is doing. We have to consider that.
It is important that animal research is seen as a respectable endeavour and is properly policed, which, on the whole, the Home Office does exceptionally well. I am grateful to the Minister, who has given a very good speech explaining how this has been done in this House and that the Government need to try to reduce the number of animals in research, as we are doing and with which I totally agree.
With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I have some problem with his comment, because it would not protect me. I have had, in the years I have been doing research, until quite recently, repeated death threats. I have had Special Branch at my house, with my 94-year-old mother hiding in the kitchen because we thought there was a bomb on the doorstep. We have had a whole range of issues. My friends who worked in the same laboratories have had fires in their houses. We have to understand that this is a very real threat to research. Some people give up research because they get so concerned, not necessarily about the value of the research they are doing but about the reputational risk they run due to the understanding of the work they are doing. We need to make it much clearer why such work is necessary. I suggest to the noble Baroness, with respect, that she is not entirely correct in the reason she gives for it being given up.
There are numerous examples I might suggest to some noble Lords in the Chamber. I have counted that, in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, over my time, there must have been at least 100 families who have benefited from the technique of in vitro fertilisation. That was made possible only by experimenting on animals, to make sure that we were not producing embryos in the human that would be abnormal, distorted or deformed, or that would die after birth or later on. That is one example. Equally, in perinatology, there has been clear evidence that animal research was definitely necessary for understanding the breathing of an animal to learn how we can actually prevent damage to infants. Indeed, years ago, I did some of that research, in a very small way, with mice, along with a man called Jonathan Wigglesworth, who was a very famous scientist —much more famous and a much better scientist than I was. There are numerous examples.
My Lords, there is no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, expresses lots of practical and ethical opinions that we might agree with, but that does not change the fact that this statutory instrument is an outrageous abuse of secondary legislation powers. As the Minister knows, a fatal amendment in this House almost never succeeds—but if ever a statutory instrument deserved a fatal amendment, this is it. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on bringing it forward. If the Government had any conscience, they would, even at this stage, acknowledge the abuse and withdraw it.
When the Public Order Bill was debated and agreed in both Houses, the meaning of “major infrastructure” was debated, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said. My noble friend Lord Beith, who is in his place, spotted the danger at that time. At Second Reading of that Bill, he said:
“I question the provision of Clause 7(7) which allows the Secretary of State to add to the list of key national infrastructure by statutory instruments. This could create an enormously wide area of scope for the powers in the Bill”.—[Official Report, 1/11/22; col. 152.]
That is exactly what has happened. How right he was to be so concerned. Indeed, in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, raised the same concerns with her Amendment 38. But now, under a different Government, those fears have been exactly realised. Can the Minister say how wide the statutory instrument casts the net? He talked of some 350,000 employees, which suggests an awful lot of sites and facilities.
This statutory instrument, I maintain, is the clearest abuse of legislative powers that I can remember in my 27 years here. If Parliament passed legislation to quell or curtail protests on major roads and railways, that at least is within the legislation, but this Government are now planning to extend this so extensively that pretty much everything can become national infrastructure. This is another effort by Labour to quell, chill and kill protest.
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The legislation will cover infrastructure that primarily facilitates pharmaceutical research, or the development or manufacturing of pharmaceutical products, or which is used in connection with activities authorised legally by Parliament under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. That will include pharmaceutical laboratories, medicine and vaccine manufacturing facilities, suppliers of animals for research and academic laboratories carry out research involving animals.
It is clear that when Parliament passed the Public Order Act 2023, it explicitly deemed it necessary to build in the ability for new elements to be added to Section 7. The original section covered vital infrastructure being targeted by overtly disruptive protest; the life science sector now faces precisely the same situation. Parliament deliberately framed the definitions in the Act widely and explicitly allowed Parliament to add to the list of key national infrastructure, should the need arise. Today, that need has arisen.
If I may, I will directly address the fatal amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. First, I disagree with the stance and content of the amendment, but I think I have a duty to explain why. Let us take the components in turn. The noble Baroness has argued that the regulations constitute “legislative overreach” and
“extend the definition of ‘critical national infrastructure’ beyond its appropriate meaning”.
I will listen to her comments, but it is important that we put this on the record now.
Disruption to the life science sector poses significant and imminent risk to this country’s ability to act in a medical crisis and, if not addressed, could seriously undermine the UK’s readiness for the next pandemic. This is entirely in keeping with the existing definition of key national infrastructure and, given the risk posed to the country, in my view it comfortably meets the Government’s high threshold for this protection. The key national infrastructure sections that we have already include road transport, rail infrastructure, air transport infrastructure, harbours, downstream oil infrastructure, gas infrastructure, onshore oil and gas, onshore electricity generation and newspaper printing infrastructure. I suggest that support for activity in a medical crisis meets that criterion.
Secondly, the noble Baroness argues in her amendment that the proposal from me and the Government today further restricts
“the democratic right to peaceful protest”.
Let me be clear to this House: the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental part of our democratic society. People should have the right to protest. If they wish to protest, they should have that right. I have undertaken protest myself. This measure is not to limit protests: it does not prohibit or restrict peaceful protests, but there is a balance to be struck, and the right to protest does not extend to causing serious disruption to or imperilling that key national infrastructure.
Finally, the noble Baroness’s amendment includes an assertion that
“sufficient steps to end animal testing have not been taken”.
I referred in my opening remarks—I put those at the top of my speech, because I am quite proud of this— to the fact that my noble friends Lord Vallance and Lady Hayman of Ullock have, with me, brought forward a manifesto commitment in the first year of this Labour Government to publish a strategy to replace animals in science. It sets out how we will create a revolutionary research and innovation system that replaces animals with alternative methods, the key caveat being “wherever possible”. That technology, which my noble friend is very much on top of, will develop. We hope to replace animals in science as we can and to phase them out, in line with our manifesto commitment.
Through the Office for Life Sciences, my noble friend Lord Vallance has allocated £75 million in funding alongside publication of the strategy to help ensure that we can develop those alternatives, which will support laboratories in moving away from animal testing and adopting safe, proven alternatives. Nobody in this country of animal lovers wants to see suffering or their unnecessary use. The Government’s plan will support that work to end animal testing, wherever possible, and roll out alternatives as soon as it is effective and safe to do so. In doing so, that will contribute to the export potential and the growth agenda for this country, and the serious scientific research that this country can utilise to make a difference in the world at large.
“Now, new advances in technology—particularly AI and genomics, but also organoid and 3D cell systems—finally allow us to see a path to changing our reliance on animals in science”.
But this SI will be an active discouragement to the commercial companies to push on in this direction, the direction in which the Government say they want to head and for which public pressure—democratic forces—is clearly important.
My second argument, to quote the amendment, is that the SI reflects
“a further restriction on the democratic right to peaceful protest”.
That was the key concern in the debate on the SI in the other place of many of the 26 Labour MPs who voted against it. The Mother of the House, Diane Abbott, was among the 110 “no” tally. Among the Labour opponents were Stella Creasy and Kerry McCarthy, former Shadow Minister of State for Defra and a former Minister for Climate. As was suggested after the debate by Neil Duncan-Jordan, the Labour MP for Poole:
“This proposal treats private, often American-owned companies the same as airports, motorways and utilities. It shields private profits from fair criticism and puts them above our right to protest. That is not right”.
Protest is part of our political system, and it is a crucial part of delivering democracy. The Minister suggested that recent developments in protest had demanded that this SI be brought in. I can go back to the 19th century, when the UK was a leader in protest movements, such as anti-vivisection, through the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876.
I have circulated two briefings to noble Lords. One of those represents some 21 signatories, among them Protect the Wild, Camp Beagle, Medicine Without Cruelty and the Network for Police Monitoring, known as Netpol. It says that some 30,000 emails have been sent to noble Lords; I apologise to the many who have written to me personally, but I do not have the capacity to respond individually. Together with the other briefing written by Naturewatch Foundation, and supported by 26 other signatories, including Cruelty Free International, Wildlife and Countryside Link, Lush cosmetics and the Animal Law Foundation, this indicates that the SI in question represents a significant and unprecedented expansion of public order powers—already some of the most far-reaching protest-related restrictions in recent UK law—and would extend them to a broad and very loosely defined sector. When it comes to animal testing, the Government have failed to demonstrate why existing laws covering harassment, obstruction, criminal damage and public order are not already sufficient.
I turn to what I believe is my point of broadest appeal, and an appeal of considerable constitutional significance. I thank Jennifer Scotney, our staff member, for going through all the debates on the original Bill. In the Commons Public Bill Committee, the right honourable Kit Malthouse stated:
“The offence will cover major roads, railways, airports, harbours, and downstream oil and gas infrastructure”.
The Explanatory Notes to the Bill list transport and energy, and add newspaper printing infrastructure, but Parliament did not scrutinise life sciences as key national infrastructure. Its later inclusion relies solely on delegated powers and was not the original legislative intent. KNI was identified as specific, identifiable physical systems whose operation underpins daily life. Life sciences, by contrast, is a broad sector, operating largely on private land, consisting of thousands of sites of varying importance. To quote the right honourable Kit Malthouse again:
“Minor infrastructure such as undesignated roads and small-scale power stations will be out of scope”.—[Official Report, Commons, Public Order Bill Committee, 14/6/22; col. 134.]
If minor or diffused infrastructure was deliberately excluded, a whole commercial research sector cannot logically fit within the definition. The National Police Chiefs’ Council testified that it would have concern about an explicit duty being placed on policing to deal with an activity on private land.
Emergency services, health, and food services were explicitly rejected as not being suitable for inclusion in the Bill; Ministers said that they were not in scope. In Committee in the Commons, Sarah Jones MP proposed adding emergency services; this was rejected by the Minister. The response in the Commons to a proposal suggesting adding farms and food production was that this would
“significantly increase the scope of the Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/10/22; col. 606.]
In our own House, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, the then Conservative Minister, said
“we do not believe it is necessary to add … into the list … at present”.—[Official Report, 16/11/22; col. 936.]
referring to other sectors. If ambulances, hospitals and food supply were excluded for being too expansive to be included in the Bill, life sciences represent a clear shift beyond Parliament’s stated limits for the Bill.
Ministers justified the secondary legislation power on the basis that new forms of infrastructure might emerge, or novel protest tactics might target previously unforeseen sites. Protests at animal testing and life science facilities, however, are long established—going back to the 19th century, as I said—well known and were explicitly referenced during the passage of the Bill. Martha Spurrier of Liberty, at the Commons Committee stage, said:
“If someone locks themselves to an animal testing centre … the police have to work out at what point that person’s right to”
protest
“becomes an infringement of other rights”.—[Official Report, Commons, Public Order Bill Committee, 09/06/2022; col. 72.]
Parliament was already aware of protests at animal testing facilities and discussed them as part of the existing protest landscape, managed under existing regulations and human rights law, not as a justification for redefining infrastructure.
I come to the broader position in which we are debating the SI. The Public Law Project website says that
“for as long as delegated legislation has existed there have been concerns about the way it is used. Sometimes the Government leaves difficult and controversial matters of policy to Statutory Instruments so that the Government can avoid the difficulties of having to pass a law”.
I posit that this is happening here.
I have been in your Lordships’ House for more than six years, so I have heard many debates along the lines of a 2014 report from the Hansard Society titled: The Devil is in the Detail: Parliament and Delegated Legislation. That report says, and this is the key part of my argument, that:
“The House of Lords should make greater, albeit judicious, use of its power of veto”
when referring to SIs. I put it to the House, and particularly to the Conservative Benches, who I know in general are extremely reluctant to vote for fatal Motions, that this would be a judicious—indeed, a critically important—use of their vote on this occasion, a vote for something we often hear championed from those Benches for free speech.
I state only the obvious when I say that politics is now in a great state of flux and the future is highly uncertain. The principle of far extending the original intentions of a Bill—which could be stopped through a mechanism that His Majesty’s loyal Opposition have in their hands but decline to use—could, in the future, be a far graver threat to the nation’s liberty than even what we have before us today. Does Parliament make the law, or have the Executive morphed into a monstrous Henry VIII hologram, saying that the law means whatever they say it means? In this age, particularly, that is a very dangerous precedent to set. I beg to move.
The idea that we can use tissues or embryoids is far from the mark. One of the issues is that, in culture, in any kind of artificial situation which is not an intact animal, there are changes to the cells that we cannot control. That is a really important issue in science, and we have to understand that that is a critical question. It is true, too, in DNA technology—we still sometimes have to have the testing of that. Think of the number of people in this House who have had treatments for cancer that used animal research. Of course it needs to be reduced, but we must understand that the cells we are modifying and then putting back into a man or a woman still need extremal validation.
To some extent, the noble Baroness is, with respect, being a little inconsistent. Some three years ago, she and I worked on the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which looked at the risks of modifying animals and modifying plants. There was a huge amount of misinformation around that, but eventually it did go through. I never saw then the noble Baroness make the points she now makes about animal research. The moral issues of animal research that she is talking about now certainly did not come up in that Bill. It was much more about making sure that, if we did produce animals in this way, we would not produce abnormal animals that would be poisonous or dangerous or deformed in some way. That is something that we have to consider. This is certainly an issue where she has been, in a sense, on the other side.
That Bill went to Third Reading and got Royal Assent without anybody really complaining about it. If the noble Baroness has complained about it, I certainly have not heard about it. Of course, at this very moment, the Government are considering, as they should, whether it should be implemented. If we do try to modify and improve animal farming and so on in the way that has been proposed, that would affect animal breeding. It is a Bill that I found difficult, but it certainly does not suggest we should not use animals carefully and with great moral care. Therefore, I have to say to the noble Baroness that her amendment is, in my view, unquestionably wrong, and I will certainly want to vote against it.
The Minister will know well that the Crime and Policing Bill is in Committee in your Lordships’ House. That too contains clauses that widen the scope of the criminalisation of protest considerably. The noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, said that the provisions of that Bill will be reviewed by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, in a review that the Government commissioned. However, in Committee, my noble friend Lord Marks queried why, having put all that quelling of protest into statute, we would then have a review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald. By that time, it will be too late to change it, because it will all be there, and so the review will not count for much. My noble friend Lord Marks fears as I do that, once these draconian laws are on the statute books, they will stay there. If the Government are serious about seeing what the report recommends, they would not rush through this statutory instrument in advance of the report.
When this statutory instrument was debated in Committee in the other place, the Minister’s colleagues were very sceptical about it. Kerry McCarthy, whom the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned, said:
“I do not accept, however, that what we are talking about today constitutes ‘key national infrastructure’. I do not think that the country will grind to a halt if MBR Acres is occasionally obstructed from supplying beagles to laboratories for testing”.
Kerry McCarthy has it right there.
Indeed, there were several Labour Members who were very doubtful about this. John McDonnell said:
“I reiterate the concerns that have been raised across the Committee: this warrants a debate on the Floor of the House. It is very rare that this number of Back Benchers turn up, so there is obviously interest across the House in having it properly debated”.—[Official Report, Commons, Delegated Legislation Committee, 17/12/25; cols. 7-12.].
But it was not properly debated; that is what we in this House have to do, to make sure that we return it for further consideration.