Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of proposed projects involving the use of dogs that are not progressed to licence application stage following review by Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Bodies due to the availability of non-animal alternative methods.

The Home Office has not made an estimate of the number of proposed projects involving dogs that do not proceed to licence application stage following review by Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Bodies (AWERBs) due to the availability of non-animal alternative methods.

Project licence applicants are, in law, responsible for robustly considering the principles of replacement, reduction and refinement (the 3Rs) when developing proposals before submission to the establishment AWERB. AWERBs operate within establishments and are a further internal check on advising the establishment licence holder and other duty holders on the application of the principles of the 3Rs before any project licence application is submitted to the Home Office.