asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if, in view of public concern regarding the use of live animals for experimental purposes, the Government will take urgent steps to initiate studies directed towards the development of alternative techniques which can be used to replace live animal experiments.

I have been asked to reply.I am not convinced that such studies could be effective in isolation. It is only in the centres in which research is being conducted that the problems of developing alternatives to the use of animals can be fully appreciated and overcome. The Medical Research Council advises me that this is where effective techniques are in fact most frequently developed and that medical research workers already use such alternatives wherever possible.