I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for his comprehensive exposition of the important matter before us today. The petition calls on the UK Government to change the law so that laboratory animals are included in the Animal Welfare Act 2006, an issue that is very important to my constituents in North Ayrshire and Arran.
As my hon. Friend said, we have debated the principles behind today’s debate, which is about the sentience of animals, on numerous occasions. He mentioned the debates on testing cosmetics on animals, on animal sentience and on a whole range of issues relating to the fundamental principle of animal sentience. The Minister and the Government have to understand that these issues are extremely important to our constituents right across the United Kingdom. We must be seen to be in tune with our constituents. We should not always be pulled along by public opinion, but we should try to put doing the right thing at the heart of everything that we do.
In previous debates on animal welfare, the Government have sought to reassure the House that they recognise animals as sentient beings. That is all very well, but by not including laboratory animals in the 2006 Act, they
make those reassurances sound a little hollow to many of us here today and many of our constituents. Let me take the opportunity to pay tribute to high-profile figures, such as Peter Egan and Ricky Gervais, who use their celebrity status to promote animal welfare. I am sure that all animal lovers are grateful to them for the work that they do.
It really is remarkable that a society that considers itself to be made up of animal lovers tolerates the fact that every two minutes, a dog, a cat, a rabbit or some other creature suffers from brutal animal testing. It is remarkable that animals in laboratories can be poisoned by toxic chemicals, shot, irradiated, gassed, blown up, drowned, burned, starved, mutilated or subjected to some other such horror.
Home Office data shows that in 2020 alone, 2.88 million procedures involving living sentient animals were carried out in the UK. However, exactly what goes on behind the closed doors of animal testing sites in the UK is shrouded in a great deal of secrecy, as the law blocks access to information about their treatment during experiments. Section 24 of the Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 makes it a criminal offence for that information to be disclosed. I see that the Minister is shaking his head as though he is either unaware of that or disagrees with it. I am sure that he will wish to respond in due course.
What we need, and what my constituents want—what I believe most people across the UK want—is a public scientific hearing on animal experiments. We need a rigorous, public scientific hearing on claims that animals can predict the responses of humans, judged by a panel of truly independent experts from relevant fields of science. Surely, anyone who sincerely believes in scientific research and believes that animal testing is necessary would have no objection to such a public hearing.
While the UK remains the top user in Europe of primates and dogs in experiments, we know that there is enough evidence that there are better, more accurate and more humane methods than resorting to animal testing. Recent developments in evolutionary and developmental biology and genetics have significantly increased our understanding of why animals have no predictive value for human responses to drugs or the pathophysiology of human diseases. Indeed, the biomedical science adviser to the Humane Society International UK, Dr Lindsay Marshall, said:
“The UK cannot expect to have world-leading science innovation whilst we rely on failing animal-based research methods that are rooted in the past…the data shows that animal models are really bad at telling us what will happen in a human body”.
The reality is that it is a human instinct to recoil at the thought and deed of inflicting unnecessary suffering on a sentient creature. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will enshrine in law the recognition that animals experience joy and are capable of feeling suffering and pain. If that recognition is to mean anything, it must also apply to those animals that happen to be in laboratories. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) made an important point about the Ministry of Defence using animals for experimentation. I do not think that is widely known, and I think our constituents would find it alarming.
The UK is supposed to be an enlightened society, but that must be reflected in more than our words; it must be reflected in how we treat other living creatures. The European Union has moved with the times, away from cruel experiments on animals and towards cutting-edge replacements, as we saw when the European Parliament voted in favour of developing an action plan to phase animals out of EU science and regulation. I know some people in the Government—perhaps none of them are here today—whose hackles will rise at the prospect of our following the example of the EU. However, this is about preventing the unnecessary suffering of our fellow creatures and moving into the 21st century, where the science is taking us—if we let it. As Dr Marshall said, using animals for research can be “dangerously misleading”.
Notwithstanding the important contribution by the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), we have to follow the science and start to move away from research that can be dangerously misleading. We must recognise animals as the sentient beings that they are, wherever they are. Let us follow the example of European nations and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and develop a road map for moving away from experimenting on animals and towards better methods that offer us real hope for cures, which is what we all want to see.
I hope the Minister will see the wisdom of ensuring that lab animals are included in the Animal Welfare Act, even at this late stage. I hope that he is listening and that he will also lend his weight to the establishment of a public scientific hearing on animal experiments. Science is about searching for the truth, so let us test the long-held so-called truth about animal experimentation using truly independent experts and see where the science takes us. No one should be afraid of that, whichever side of the argument they happen to be on. Let the facts speak for themselves. Let us have a public scientific hearing on animal experiments. Let us put an end to the unnecessary suffering of our fellow creatures.
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