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7.41 pm

Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I have the greatest sympathy with all that has been said tonight, especially by the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), the chairman of the all-party animal welfare group. His views will be widely shared by hon. Members of all parties.

The welfare of animals is extremely important, and we have a relatively good reputation and record in this country, but the last thing that we must allow ourselves to indulge in is complacency. I entirely endorse what has been said about the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. As has been said, it is now 10 years old, and I understand that a radical review is being carried out. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I endorse the need for that review. We must be extremely careful to ensure that the order is adequate to its task, because it will take some time to complete the review and to introduce consequent legislation. There is no room for complacency.

I spent this morning at the sheep and beef event at the Bath and West showground where, incidentally, I was given a copy of an excellent tape called "British Beef is Better by Far", sung by a group called the "Moo Cow Blues". I promised to mention that in the House this evening, and now that I have done so I need not mention it again.

We have a good reputation, but I am concerned that in waiting for the rest of Europe to move we may slow ourselves down. The current discussion on the use of animals for testing cosmetics is timely, as is this debate, because a decision may be taken at any moment to postpone any action until the end of the century.

We still do rather more tests than other countries in Europe. The latest figures which I have show that 1 per cent. of all tests on animals here are for cosmetics and toiletries, whereas the figure for the whole of Europe is 0.3 per cent., so we have no room for complacency.

Mr. Gale: The hon. Gentleman must take on board the fact that some countries claim that they do not use animals

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at all; sadly, they simply hide behind the cloak of having their dirty work done in other places, one of which is the United Kingdom.

Mr. Tyler: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because that underlines my endorsement of his point that we must not take unilateral action and assume that the rest of Europe will follow. The argument that the number of experiments is so low that it can be discounted can be turned on its head: if such tests are so unessential, surely we should do everything we can to eliminate them altogether. One way of doing that is to introduce a fee that makes them uneconomic.

We thought that we were moving in that direction when the 1986 legislation was introduced, when the original fees were introduced and when we thought that a European moratorium was about to take effect. Sadly, that does not seem to have happened, and I hope that the Minister will tell us the attitude of Her Majesty's Government, as it is not good enough to hide behind the attitudes of other member states. We need to know what our Ministers are doing on this extremely important issue.

The 1995 report of the Animal Procedures Committee expressed concern that

"some licensees are still not aware of the terms imposed by their own licences."

That is an extraordinary situation and brings us specifically to the question of what the fees are used for. Hon. Members have referred to the number of inspectors. The figure for 1994 was only 19. Have more been appointed since then, or are there even fewer in 1996? They had to inspect 328 research establishments and assess 955 project licences. Have those numbers been reduced? Are the inspectors more effective? We need to know.

The Liberal Democrats, in our 1992 document "A Matter of Conscience", the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and many others have referred to the inadequacy of the inspection procedures. In 1995, there were 19 detected infringements of licences, and only 11 were discovered by inspectors. That is an extraordinarily low rate. Either this is the best regulated part of our national life, or a great deal is going undiscovered. How many more infringements might be discovered if the inspectorate were more effective and could attend to the issues more comprehensively?

The amount of money that has been ring-fenced for research into alternatives to testing on animals has declined. The figure of £253,000 for 1995, which has been cited, has gone down in the current year to £242,000. The Animal Procedures Committee was banking on at least a modest increase to about £260,000. What will be the budget for 1997-98? We need to know, as that is what we are here for this evening. What is the point of discussing fees if we do not know how they will be used?

Will the Minister tell us in precise terms what the allocated budget will be, whether it will be ring-fenced and, especially, how much will be provided for the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods which has been set up in Italy? What will be the implications if implementation of the cosmetics directive is delayed? How will we be sure that in the next three years, up to the end of the century, there will still be an

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increase in the pressure on the institutions and companies involved to move in the right direction? Why should there not be a higher fee for the licences that we are discussing?

It would be helpful if the Minister could say precisely what revenue he expects to raise from personal licences. It is by no means clear from the briefing that we had before the debate, and certainly not from his incredibly cavalier introduction, that there will be an increase of the order that many in the House, let alone the country, would expect. The fees raised from the holders of certificates to run designated establishments should be directly ploughed back into the investigation of alternatives.

Madam Deputy Speaker, this is a short debate which does not permit us to range as widely as we would like, but with your particular interest, you will agree that many people outside the House do not believe that we have got the priorities right. As the hon. Member for North Thanet, who chairs the all-party animal welfare group, has said several times, it is important for us to reflect the public's growing unease. We must not become so complacent about the progress since the passage of the 1986 Act that we do not accept that major additional improvements are needed now that it is 10 years old. That is the least that the public expect of us. It is not adequate for the Government to say that we are waiting on everyone else in Europe, because if we wait that long, it will be many years too late.

7.50 pm

Mr. Iain Mills (Meriden): I will be brief. There are alternatives in respect of costs and fees. I am sorry that FRAME, the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments, has not yet been mentioned. I am a founder member of FRAME, which has been trying for many years to find alternatives, such as invertebrates or computer programmes, to the use of animals.

Mr. Morley: I did not mention FRAME because of the narrowness of the order. Government funding for alternatives has been through the European centre. We recognise that FRAME does excellent work. One argument for increased or differential charges is that the Government could direct more resources to FRAME.

Mr. Mills: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's remarks. If differential charges could help FRAME in its dedicated campaign to find alternatives, which I have supported for many years, I should be pleased.

Sometimes, the House does not completely understand the use of animals in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other experiments. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) knows all about it. I just wish that more of our colleagues were more concerned about organisations such as FRAME.

7.52 pm

Mr. Sackville: We are discussing the regulation of animal procedures. There is never much good news on this subject because it is highly unsatisfactory that we have to experiment on animals. The House knows that we cannot go too wide while discussing a fairly narrow order, but clearly there are reasons, such as medical research and public safety, why we use animals. No one likes it, but we are discussing the matter against the background of a

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gradual fall in the number of experiments or procedures: from 3.6 million in 1987, to 2.84 million in 1994, the last validated figure.

The European definition of cosmetics is fairly wide and includes not only what people call cosmetics--such as lipstick--but soap, shampoo, toothpaste, protective sun cream, wart removers and other skin care products. The figure for such experiments has fallen from 14,500 in 1987 to 3,520 in 1994, the last validated figure. We expect to publish a figure below 2,000 for 1995. There is at least a welcome fall in the number of procedures, especially those designated as cosmetic, which cause the most offence. A small number of those involve beauty products, but many involve other products.

The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) asked several questions. He echoed the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) in asking about the exact deficit. It was expected for good reason that about 20,000 personal licences would be applied for and granted. In fact, the figure is 17,000. Those figures have led to an accumulated deficit over three years of nearly £1 million. It was to avoid a very large jump in one fell swoop, and I shall come to the reasons for that in a minute, that we decided to ask for an interim fee to make up the deficit and then go for a higher annual fee to be payable from April 1998.

The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe also asked why we should not have a different structure of fees to increase income. The image of large pharmaceutical companies and rich corporations paying all the fees is not entirely right. Many licences are held by people who work at universities. Some universities have several hundred personal licences. Jumps in fees not only involve the details of the balance sheet of profit and loss at Glaxo, but have academic ramifications.

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