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Animal Experiments
The Government's tentative steps towards greater openness
The Home Office minister, Caroline Flint, announced on Thursday [July 1 2004] that they would not be repealing the confidentiality clause (section 24) of the Animals. At the same time, she announced that project licenses, suitably anonymised to protect the identity of scientists, would be made available. (Read her statement here.) As Naturewatch’s Director, John Ruane, says, “The most important information will actually be published. We don’t need to know who performs the experiments: we just need to know how many animals are used, the general nature of the procedures, the severity band and the cost-benefit analysis”.
Naturewatch suspects that the present retention of section 24 is a politically expedient measure designed to cover the Home Office if there are adverse effects following the publication of the anonymised project licenses. In the climate of fear that has been propagated by extremist groups, scientists who would otherwise be inclined towards greater openness are afraid to do so. We believe this explains the Government’s somewhat tentative approach: provided that there are no adverse consequences to publishing anonymised project licenses, the way could be opened for the full repeal of the clause in the review in two years’ time. However, if details in the licenses are traced to individual scientists who are then subjected to intimidation by extremist groups, anonymised licenses would cease to be published and section 24 would remain firmly entrenched.
We remain concerned, however, that there is no retrospective review of what happens in the procedures, and in particular whether the severity predicted in the project licences were accurate in reality. We urge the Government to make this a priority: we would recommend that this be done in such a way as to encourage the reporting of honest mistakes rather than to set up a punitive regime.
For these reasons we cautiously welcome the Government’s move towards greater openness but look forward to this being enhanced at the review in two years’ time.
For Naturewatch's briefing on the Lords' report, click here.
