Navendu Mishra

It is a pleasure to serve in this debate with you in the Chair, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) for securing this debate. We come from different political traditions, but on animal testing we are united. I often receive emails and letters in my constituency inbox about animal rights and animal testing. It is an issue that is important to the people of Stockport. I am the last Back-Bench speaker in the debate, and all the points I wanted to make have already been covered, so I will keep my remarks brief. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell), who is a good friend, for all the work she does on this issue. Sir John, I invite you to join the plant-based parliamentary group she runs in addition to all the other work she does for her constituency and her APPG roles. I am sure you would be very welcome at the next meeting. Sadly, the reality is that in 2024, 2.64 million scientific procedures involving living animals were carried out in Britain, including 2,646 procedures on dogs and almost 2,000—1,936—procedures on non-human primates. These figures are significant, and they are the figures we know about. Because of the lack of resources, many—including myself—would argue that more procedures and testing may be going on illegally that we do not know about. This is an important issue. I am proud to have been a Labour candidate in the 2017, 2019 and 2024 general elections. We stood on a manifesto commitment to work towards phasing out animal testing. Sadly, in 2025, almost 5 million animals were approved for experiments in the coming years. The Government need to pay attention to this issue and prioritise tackling it. The point about Herbie’s law has been reiterated by pretty much everyone who has spoken. The Government should work towards introducing that law in legislation as soon as possible, without delay. All 650 MPs in this House of Commons would be proud of Britain’s heritage when it comes to innovation, medical research and technological research. We should harness that for animal-free and humane testing. The UK has an opportunity to be a global leader in this field and to cut out the senseless suffering that goes on. More than 92% of drugs that show promise in animal testing currently fail to meet clinical tests and benefit patients, mostly for reasons of poor efficacy and safety that were not predicted by animal testing. I place on the record in Hansard my thanks to Animal Free Research UK, the charity that has done so much work on this issue. I am in the process of reading a fantastic book called “Rat Trap” by Dr Pandora Pound, who is involved in the Safer Medicines Trust. I look forward to learning more about the work that organisation is doing. Once again, this debate is important. The figures are quite stark and I hope the Government will take urgent action.