As promised, we presented the petition to No.10 Downing Street on 24th November 2016 accompanied by Peter Egan, the well know British actor and supporter of Run Free Alliance. We received a response relatively quickly from Rt. Hon. Amber Rudd, MP., Home Secretary, stating that there were no plans to eliminate Beagles as a species from animal testing in the UK. We replied with challenges to her statements therein but received no further communication from her. As our petition was on the Change.org platform, having been set up prior to the more automated Government petition website, the process route for us to take was to have the support of an MP to approach the backbench committee to try and secure a debate in Parliament. Very soon after the response from Amber Rudd, Parliament went into Christmas recess and our prior contact with 4 cross party MPs went cold. We did gain verbal support in January with one MP and a meeting was set for early March. Sadly, following that meeting, Brexit matters took priority and we were politely advised that this would not be something they could add to their workload. We continued to contact further MPs and were gaining response when the General Election was called, which effectively meant all MPs were without seats until the results of the GE were in. Sadly some seats were lost and now we face extreme difficulty in that Brexit matters are taking full priority with all MPs. We are, as you can imagine, very disappointed that the timing of our petition has been whilst so much upheaval is taking place within the UK Government, making any progress on effecting a debate extremely difficult. You can be sure that we will continue to lobby for change and use the opportunity of Brexit to put pressure on the UK Government around any of the laws relating to animal experimentation being amended, once we are out of the EU. WE DO , HOWEVER, HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS SO PLEASE AWAIT A SEPARATE MESSAGE COMING TO YOU IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS We thank you for your continued support, please follow us for news, articles and updates on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Runfreealliance/ and Twitter @UKRunFree