Sarah Jones

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on securing this debate, and thank hon. Members for their contributions. It is important to start by reflecting on the horror of some of the stories we have heard and some of the cases that have been reported regarding animal treatment. I question whether anybody in this House would want that to continue. I suspect we are all united in wanting to phase out animal testing as quickly as possible. It is understandable that there are Members of this House who are pushing the Government to go much faster than we already are, but we are all heading in the same direction and trying to get the same outcome. It is right and proper that campaign groups, Members of Parliament and others continue to push us to do everything we can, because we need to do that. The transparency of the report was important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) said, we need to understand picture, and the more information and data we have, the more we can see where the challenges are. I agree with that point; we need more transparency in the system to make sure we get to where we went to be as quickly as possible. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), said, our laws are unequivocal that animal testing cannot be authorised where a scientifically valid non-animal alternative exists. That is the law, and we need to make sure it is implemented. It is a fundamental principle for us all, in terms of the care that we have for our animals and the need to avoid unnecessary harm. As the shadow Minister also said, at the moment, despite rapid progress in science, there are not validated alternatives for every area of research and safety testing.