Public Order Act 2023 (Interference With Use or Operation of Key National Infrastructure) Regulations 2025

Lord Winston Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

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.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

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.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

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.

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.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

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.

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.