Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what procedures her Department has in place to assess at the conclusion of any animal experiment whether the severity level expected by researchers before the experiment corresponded to what the actual severity level was.

The Home Office has published detailed guidance (see: Guidance on the Operation of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986), which describes the requirements the Home Office places on researchers in the assessment of retrospective severity. At the end of a series of regulated procedures the project licence holder is required to classify the actual severity of the series of procedures carried out using observations taken from the animals during day-to-day monitoring. This information has to be reported to the Home Office annually, and at the conclusion of a programme of work, and following implementation of 2010/63 EU was published for the first time in the Annual Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2014.

Where appropriate, Home Office Inspectors cross-check and assess these records against the severity categories set out in project licences.

All project licences using non-human primates, cats, dogs and equidae, all those involving procedures classified as severe as well as those for education and training purposes or using endangered animals, are also required to be assessed retrospectively. In such cases, the Secretary of State requires an establishment’s Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body to conduct the retrospective assessment, which has to be submitted to the Home Office within three months in order that an inspector can complete the assessment on behalf of the Secretary of State.