Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what experiments accounted for the 50 per cent increase in 2016 in the number of experiments on new world monkeys, marmosets and tamarins.

The numbers of non-human primates used each year depends on a number of factors, including the programmes of work and available funding.

In 2016 there were 125 new world monkeys, used in basic research: 49 for nervous system; and, 76 for multisystemic research. In the same year, 72 new world monkeys were used for translational and applied research: 24 for human nervous and mental disorders; 24 for other human disorders; and, 24 for non-regulatory toxicology and ecotoxicology.