Animal Testing

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) on an excellent opening speech.

All life is a miracle and every living creature has an intrinsic value that we cannot measure or put a price on, so I am not in the least bit surprised that hundreds of my constituents signed this petition. We rightly expect the highest standards for animals bred in this country and should demand the same for those imported from abroad. The British people want tough penalties on cruelty. Labour’s animal welfare agenda, from tackling puppy farming to ending trail hunting, brings policy closer to the public’s values.

Those same values matter when we consider animal testing. Given the invasive, painful and often lethal nature of these experiments, the burden of justification has to be immense. It is not enough to say that the ends justify the means; the ends themselves must be clearly achievable, necessary and proportionate enough to warrant such suffering. In other words, we cannot morally justify harming animals simply because we consider ourselves a more intelligent species.

If some disagree with that statement, it is a useful thought experiment to consider whether we would accept it as morally justifiable and acceptable for a provably more intelligent species to experiment on our families and loved ones for their own purposes. Would we stand by and nod along stoically that all species can rightly be used however they wish by another that has a more developed brain? I think not.

A genuinely moral justification can be attempted only if the scale of suffering prevented by testing on living creatures provably and overwhelmingly outweighs the suffering of the test patients themselves. Too often, that case is simply not made. When we weigh the public interest in research and medical progress against the imperative to minimise harm to animals, the balance just does not stack up to scrutiny. Animal testing is often cruel and would often pass for barbaric sadism in any other context.

More profoundly still, the scientific value of animal testing is often overstated. As we have heard repeatedly today, there is growing evidence that animal models can be unreliable predictors for human outcomes, and we have an increasing range of scientific tools and models that offer a more accurate alternative. If the suffering we are inflicting on these animals is profound but the result is uncertain, can the means really be justified at all?

Herbie’s law would help to correct that balance, through a phased transition by 2035 away from animal experimentation and towards more effective alternatives, including human-specific methods backed by training and support for scientists. More than 2 million animals were used in experiments in our country in 2024 alone. That is suffering on an immense scale, affecting animals alive today and countless more yet to be bred into a system of pain. Herbie’s law offers the chance to turn a historic page and reduce suffering, improve science and move our laws closer to the values that the public already hold. That would be a profound step forward for animals living now and those spared this fate in future. I urge Ministers to adopt Herbie’s law in full as a matter of urgency.