THE home secretary David Blunkett will this week propose to tighten the law to stop extremists targeting people who conduct vital research using animals.

Harassing a worker at home will become an arrestable offence and courts will be able to bar activists from going near a particular address for three months.

There will also be powers to stop activists threatening people by telephoning them at work, a tactic commonly used by the animal rights lobby.

The changes will be put forward by the Home Office in the Queen’s speech this week, which will announce amendments to the Harassment Act.

Intimidating calls to two people in the same office will be considered harassment; at the moment several calls must be made to the same person before an offence is committed. The change is designed to address the problem of activists targeting groups of people, rather than individuals, in one company.

Companies such as Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a Cambridgeshire animal testing company, have been the victim of a sustained campaign by animal rights groups. Employees and people working for companies linked to HLS have been intimidated and attacked.

Blunkett has been accused of not taking a hard enough stance against the protesters and this week’s move is intended to show that he is serious about the issue. Under existing laws a person protesting against someone at home can be moved on but not arrested.

The tactics of extremists were highlighted last month when the body of an 82-year-old woman whose family had links with a farm that supplied animals for experiments was stolen from her grave.

This year after a campaign of intimidation, Montpellier, the construction company, withdrew from a contract to build an animal research laboratory in Oxford.

A Home Office source said: “Animal research saves thousands of lives every year. It is wholly unacceptable that a small minority of extremists should mount a campaign of fear and intimidation.”

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