Animal Testing

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for opening the debate and for her ongoing commitment to this issue. I thank the petitioners —including 201 from Taunton and Wellington—for raising it, and other Members for their speeches, which have shown the sincerity on this issue across parties.

The petitioners are right that the current system is failing on welfare, on science and on the pace of change, but it would be wrong to make out that all the science is resolved. Although there are certainly areas where animal testing cannot yet be replaced, we could, as the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, be doing a lot more. Animal testing should be ended as soon as possible and this debate should spur the Government into doing a lot more.

Our country wrote the world’s first animal welfare law back in 1822. The UK has a long tradition of being ahead on animal welfare, and we should be ahead now. The Government’s strategy, published in November, sets a welcome headline target of a 35% reduction in the number of dogs and primates used in pharmacokinetic studies by 2030, but a 35% reduction five years away is not ambitious enough, and it has not been put on a statutory footing. Like the petitioners, I am concerned that none of the strategy’s targets are in statute. They are ambitions in a policy document with no binding mechanism to ensure they are met. A 35% target for 2030 could become a 25% target in 2032 or 2035. There is nothing in the strategy to prevent that from happening. If we are serious about leading, we should be willing to put our targets into law.

We should also be willing to lead on alternative methods, and to do that we need the alternative methods to be validated. Following Brexit, we lost access to European testing, and it has taken five years to establish a new UK centre for the validation of alternative methods. The new centre is welcome, but it is five years overdue. We need to be ambitious from day one; naming a new centre will not be enough on its own.

Last year, the Animals in Science Regulation Unit found 146 confirmed cases of non-compliance across 45 establishments, of which 43% related to inadequate care in respect of issues such as food, water or suitable facilities. The regulator is funded by the very establishments that it is supposed to regulate. That is a structural conflict of interest that we should not accept, as my noble Friend the Lib Dem peer Lord Clement-Jones has said in the other place.

Will the Minister put the strategy’s targets on a statutory footing, with binding milestones, so that a 35% target by 2030 cannot slip into something entirely different? Secondly, will he make the UK centre for the validation of alternative methods ambitious from day one, properly funded, independent and able to validate methods at pace? Thirdly, will he arrange an independent review of the regulator, the ASRU, and address its funding conflicts of interest? The regulator should not be paid by those it regulates.

In responding to the debate, the Minister will no doubt remind us that the carefully regulated use of animals in research remains necessary for medical reasons, but that is not enough of an answer to the petition, and it does not answer the questions this debate puts before us. There is no reason why the regulator should be funded by those it regulates, there is no reason why our targets should not be on a statutory footing, and there is no reason why dogs—the obvious first candidate for replacement—should still be used in repeat dose toxicity testing up to 2030. Those are reasonable, meaningful and achievable changes that the Government could make, and they should be taking action now.