Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many animals they have approved for experimentation over the next five years during the year to date; and how this relates to their manifesto commitment to phase out animal testing.

The Government’s direction is unequivocal: we want to replace animal testing wherever scientifically possible. The £75 million Replacing Animals in Science Strategy is a practical programme to make that happen—accelerating innovation, validation and adoption so that robust non-animal methods move from development into routine use. Where alternatives do not yet exist, animal use will remain tightly controlled, but our objective is to reduce that dependence progressively and decisively.

Project licences granted in 2026 to date under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 have authorised the use of approximately 3.6 million animals over the lifetime of those licences.

This figure represents the maximum numbers authorised for each workstream of a project licence and does not necessarily reflect the numbers that will actually be used, nor account for the continued use or re-use of animals across a project. As a result, this figure may overestimate the number of individual animals expected to be used under each licence and actual use may be lower.

The number of procedures conducted each year is reported in the annual statistics on scientific procedures. The latest published statistics show that 2.54 million scientific procedures involving living animals were carried out in Great Britain in 2025, this is a decrease from 2.64 million in 2024 and the lowest number under The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.

All project licence applications must demonstrate full application of the principles of Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. This means animals cannot be used where a suitable non-animal alternative is available, the minimum number of animals must be used to achieve the scientific objective, and procedures must be refined to minimise harm. These obligations continue throughout the lifetime of a licence.