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Britain will introduce tough new measures to protect people from animal rights extremists, the government said Friday (July 30) in a move welcomed by researchers and industry.
Police forces will be given new powers to deal with protests outside peoples' homes, and special prosecutors will be appointed in each police district, Home Office minister Carline Flint said.
"What we are talking about here is an extremist campaign that is attacking people for doing activities which are guided by the law," she told BBC Radio 4.
"We want to get some new legislation on the books," Flint added, stressing that "we're not talking about denying people the right to protest."
Researchers and the pharmaceutical industry have been calling on the government to tackle the escalating levels of intimidation and violence employed by a small minority of extremists—a group increasingly referred to as "animal rights terrorists."
In recent months, the activities of animal rights groups have been credited with the scrapping of plans for a primate research lab in Cambridge and the suspension of work on an animal house in Oxford.
In fact, the measures to defend against extremist acts cost the United Kingdom's universities about £175,000 each per year, the Royal Society said on Friday. The figure is based on a report drawn from data provided by 50 academic institutions.
In April this year, the victims of animal rights harassment, intimidation and violence formed a support group called Victims of Animal Rights Extremism (VARE).
Their view, along with many in the scientific community, is that Britain needs to enact a new, specific piece of legislation like those directed at racist violence or football hooligans.
"I think one of the most important things is that government specifically say they have not ruled out a specific piece of legislation," VARE coordinator Mark Matfield told The Scientist.
"We will be watching to see how effective these measures that have just been introduced are, but our view is that this is a good start. We don't believe it's the end of the process," Matfield said.
The new proposals amend the Criminal Justice and Police Act to allow police to ban protesters from returning to the vicinity of a person's house for 3 months, and strengthen laws to deal with campaigns directed at groups of people or companies.
Ailsing Burnand of the BioIndustry Association, a group representing UK bioscience companies, said the new announcements were a big stride forward.
"It's absolutely clear that if what the government is putting forward in this White Paper doesn't work, then we will have to look again at a single piece of legislation. Although you have to do what can be done speedily," Burnand said.
But Heather James, of the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, said new legislation would do little to stop those who are already flouting the law.
"People who break the law know the risks they are taking. Changing the law is not going to make any difference," James told BBC Radio.
Evan Harris, a politician from the minority Liberal Democrat party and local member of Parliament for the Oxford animal research center said the measures were "welcome, necessary, and proportionate."
"But, what the government has announced today is in some respects too little and in many cases too late," he said, adding that the government has not underwritten additional insurance costs for small contractors and public sector organizations doing government-backed or government-funded animal research.
References
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| | | P. Hagan, UK probes costs of extremism," The Scientist, June 17, 2004.
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