Lord Willetts (Con)

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred in her powerful speech to what she called the “revulsion” against the use of animals in medical experiments. That is why there has been a long-term strategy, reinforced by this Government but also pursued by previous Governments, of the so-called “three Rs”: the reduction, replacement and refinement of the use of animals in medical experiments. That is the right thing to do and I am optimistic that new technologies will make it possible to make much more progress in that direction. However, meanwhile, we have to engage with the world as it is, and some of the most important features of the world as it is—which have not yet been referred to by noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett—are the international standards on pharmaceuticals and drugs, many of which require that, before a drug is tested on a human, it should first have been tested on a rodent and a non-rodent. That is the legal regulatory environment within which all life science companies currently operate. It means that the production, export and import of large amounts of medical treatments—pharmaceuticals—have to comply with that international agreement, to which most countries, including the UK, have subscribed. I did not hear the Green Party say that it thought we should withdraw from that international agreement. Therefore, if animals, both rodents and non-rodents, are to be used before a drug is tested on a human, we need a supply of those rodents and non-rodents. As Science Minister, I saw the extraordinary range of activities by protesters going way beyond the normal human right to protest, which of course we must support, and designed to make it impossible for the UK life sciences industry to comply with the international regulation to which we were all committed. Compliance with that regulation is necessary for our wider access to drugs and capacity to innovate and produce new drugs. There has been discussion of national infrastructure, as if somehow we are talking about provisions that would immediately be applied to every pharmacist or every life science lab. What is actually shocking, when you look at it close up, is how we are dependent on a very narrow range and extraordinarily small number of facilities to enable us to comply with those international requirements. If we were to lose those, it would not be a matter of protests outside every pharmacy: if we were to lose a very small number of key facilities, our capacity to respond to medical emergencies and deliver up-to-date medicines to people through the NHS would be much diminished. I understand the noble Baroness’s challenge, but I am in no doubt that the facilities that enable us to comply with those key regulations applying to pharmaceuticals are absolutely part of key national infrastructure. Surely, the lesson of Covid is how important that capacity is. Of course it is right for us in this House to consider whether the proposal is within the terms of the provisions for national infrastructure. But, having observed at close hand what we depend on for drugs and services that we take for granted, I am in no doubt that it is.