Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the levels of the use of dogs at the MBR Acres facility in Cambridgeshire; and whether she plans to take steps to end the breeding and supply of dogs for scientific testing.

Pharmaceutical legislation requires that, before a medicine can be approved for testing in humans, it is tested in a rodent and non-rodent species under international guidelines. This may include dogs as an appropriate model. The number of Beagles bred is largely determined by the forecast needs of the pharmaceutical industry that require testing of medicines. The number of scientific procedures using animals, including dogs, is published annually at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/animals-in-science-regulation-unit#statistics.

The Home Office regulator assures compliance of all work licensed with the rigorous requirements of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. For every research proposal, Home Office inspectors assure that animals are replaced with non-animal alternatives wherever possible, the number of animals are reduced to the minimum necessary to achieve the result sought, and that, for those animals which must be used, procedures are refined as much as possible to minimise their suffering.

This Government has made a commitment to the long-term goal of phasing out animal testing in science and research in all but exceptional circumstances. In November 2025, the Government published Replacing animals in science: A strategy to support the development, validation, and uptake of alternative methods, backed by £75 million in funding. This includes plans to establish a UK Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods and a preclinical translational models hub, alongside specific commitments to reduce the number of dogs used in scientific procedures.