Home office in court over vivisection
The Government will be forced to answer allegations that it has
attempted to cover-up full details of animal experiments it licenses in the UK, in an important test case to be heard by the Information
Tribunal today (Monday 17th December).
The tribunal will hear how the BUAV has been refused detailed
information about animal experiment licences under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The BUAV argues the public should be legally
entitled under the FOIA to information which animal experiment licence
applicants must submit to the Home Office by law. This includes the
purpose of the experiments, how the applicant intends to limit animal
suffering and, crucially, their justification for using animals rather
than alternatives in their proposed experiments. The BUAV is and has
never been interested in information that identifies who is or was
involved or where the research is or has taken place, and accepts that
genuinely commercially sensitive information can be withheld.
The Tribunal is the latest attempt by the BUAV to get the Government
to abide by the FOIA in the controversial area of animal experiments.
The organisation first asked for the licence information of five
separate applications as a test case soon after the Act came into
force in January 2005.
The Government has attempted to fudge its duty to release information
so far by releasing 'summaries' of the licence information, written by
the research applicants for public consumption. The BUAV argues such
summaries are likely to be biased towards emphasising the positive
aspects of the research and downplaying negative aspects such as
animal suffering; and in any event the public is entitled to the
actual information held by public authorities under the FOIA.
'The Home Office's repeated refusal to release non-confidential
information about animal experiments just goes to further prove they
are afraid of how the public will react if they are given real
information about what actually happens to animals in UK laboratories,
often at tax payers expense,' said BUAV chief executive Michelle
Thew.
'This case demonstrates yet again that the Government rides roughshod
over public concern in this matter. The controversy surrounding the
summary of the Attorney-General's advice about the legality of the
Iraq War demonstrates that it is not safe to assume that a summary
will be fair, especially in acutely controversial areas like animal
experiments.
She added: 'The debate about animal experiments tends to be polarised,
often characterised more by heat than by light. Informed public debate
would redress the balance between heat and light but there cannot be
informed debate without information. Nor, in a climate of obsessive
secrecy, can the public be assured that the Government is keeping
within the law in the way it regulates animal experiments - especially
after a High Court judge recently ruled it was illegally licensing
animal experiments in a Judicial Review brought by the BUAV earlier
this year.' (see notes below).
NOTES
The Government was found guilty of turning a blind eye to substantial
suffering of animals in Home Office licensed experiments and consequently misleading the public over the extent of animal suffering
in UK laboratories in a Judicial Review brought by the BUAV based on
an undercover investigation at Cambridge University in 2001.
The Information Tribunal takes place at 10:30am at the Finance and Tax
Tribunal, 15-19 Bedford Avenue, London WC1. The BUAV will be
represented by Daniel Alexander QC. BUAV chief executive Michelle Thew
will be available for on and off camera interviews before and after
the hearing.
68 per cent of people in the UK would like to live in a world where no-
one wants or believes we need to experiment on animals, according to a
poll carried out earlier this year on behalf of the BUAV by NFP
Synergy Research (www.nfpsynergy.com).
76 per cent of the British public think the Government should, as a
matter of principle, prohibit experiments on any live animals which
cause pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm in a TNS national
opinion poll commissioned by the BUAV in 2003
The BUAV has been campaigning for over 100 years to achieve a world
where nobody wants or believes we need to experiment on animals. We
are committed to achieving our aims through reliable and reasoned
evidence-based debate. We are proudly non-violent and respect the
quality of life for all - animals and people.
For more information contact: Media Manager Mary-Louise Harding 0207 619 6978/Out of hours mobile: 07850 510 955 /mary-louise.harding@buav.org