Jack Straw, the home secretary, is to be advised to make the details of animal experiments more public. But advisers are likely to argue that the identities of scientists involved in experiments, and the details of commercially sensitive projects, should remain secret.
The conclusions, expected to be published in the coming weeks, come from the Animals Procedures Committee, the independent group of experts which advises the home secretary on the licensing of experiments "carried out on living, protected animals which may cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm".
They are set to provide the home secretary with yet more dilemmas over the government's policies on animal testing, after Straw last week put his weight behind new legislation aimed at preventing animal activists violently intimidating staff at research laboratories. Amendments to the criminal justice bill could lead to an expansion of restrictions on picketing houses and acting in an intimidatory way.
Tony Blair, the prime minister, last week also gave his personal backing to Huntingdon Life Sciences, the beleaguered animal testing laboratory under siege from animal rights protesters. The protesters are now calling on the company's financial backer, the Royal Bank of Scotland, to withdraw financial support from the Cambridge-based company.
It is thought that the spectre of further protests helped to scupper Cambridge University's plans for a £20m cognitive research laboratory, which was to house animal experiments.
The government, however, is keen to keep scientific and pharmaceutical companies in the country, believing their research projects may one day help to alleviate human illness.
The government last year reported a massive increase in scientific experiments on animals as work intensifies on the human genome project.
In fact, both sides of the fractious debate over animal testing could take something from any government move towards more openness in the licensing of animal experiments.
Some scientists applying for licences fear that more disclosure of information would put their personal security as well as that of their family at risk from animal rights activists. But other researchers argue that more openness would lead to less suspicion and wider public appreciation of the benefits of animal experiments.
The Animals Procedures Committee has been consulted on how the government's Freedom of Information Act should impact on the licensing of animal experiments. It is just one of many consultations being undertaken in a reappraisal of the government's policies 10 years after the original Animals Procedures Act was passed through parliament.
After announcing the consultation last year, Professor Michael Banner, the chairman of the committee, said: "There are important arguments for increasing the amount of information which is available to the public in this field and there are also arguments against. We think it right to have a full consultation exercise before we offer the home secretary our detailed advice about the issue."
Last week, one of the officials on the secretariat for the committee, Richard West, said the report on the consultation was likely to propose more openness, while recognising limits for reasons of personal safety and commercial confidentiality.
The committee received a large number of responses to the consultation paper - some 2,500 in total. Individual respondents tended to favour openness with constraints for reasons of personal safety. Pharmaceutical and research companies preferred to err more on the side of secrecy, particularly for commercially sensitive projects.
