OMBUDSMAN AND SUFFERING IN ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS

That this House notes the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's (PHSO) investigation report PA-2823, which rejects Uncaged's complaint against the Home Office's regulation of Imutran's pig-to-primate organ transplant research, laid before Parliament in December 2006; further notes that Uncaged won a legal battle having asserted Home Office maladministration in this case; further notes that at least 17 primates used in Imutran procedures categorised as of only moderate severity were found dead or in a collapsed state rather than being euthanased before they suffered a significant departure from their health as required by the moderate severity limit according to published policy; is deeply concerned at the PHSO's erroneous reasoning at paragraph 13, which confuses the degree of harm caused by death in itself with the level of harm involved in this case where the experiments were allowed to continue until the animal is found dead as a direct result of the experiment; further notes that the PHSO has repeatedly refused to respond substantively to Uncaged's expert submissions regarding this unsound reasoning; and calls on the Government to establish an independent inquiry into the numerous significant outstanding concerns regarding the regulation of this research programme in the light of PHSO's flawed investigation.