BRITAIN’S senior law officer is ordering a national crackdown on animal rights terrorists who the City claims have cost the country more than £1 billion in lost investment.

Lord Goldsmith, QC, the Attorney-General, will use a team of specialist prosecutors to target the militants and ensure that more ringleaders of the terror campaigns against scientists are brought to trial.

The Attorney-General told The Times: “These people are determined and committed and we have got to be equally determined and committed.”

The City has accused ministers of not doing enough to combat the growing violence of animal rights fanatics.

The Government is due to announce its new strategy this week, but senior figures in the City fear that ministers will renege on promises to bring in new legislation to stop those working in animal research from being terrorised in their homes.

Lord Goldsmith said that he was disturbed by reports of harassment of companies and their employees. Companies involved in research and development say that they are now having to spend up to £70 million a year protecting their properties and key personnel.

Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been warned during recent meetings with business figures that a number of pharmaceutical giants are threatening to pull out of Britain because of threats from anti-vivisection militants.

A leading academic working in animal research told The Times yesterday: “This industry is worth over £3 billion to the British economy every year, and the best estimate is that we have lost at least a billion because of this campaign of violent harassment.

“There are no new research and development projects coming here. Nobody wants to come here and work here anymore when they and their families face attack in their own homes.”

As a first step in the crackdown, Lord Goldsmith is asking the Director of Public Prosecutions to commit more resources to the problem. This will involve some 43 specialist prosecutors — one for each criminal justice area in England and Wales.

These prosecutors will join police on a new national forum that will have the task of drawing up a battle plan.

One of the forum’s main aims will be to identify the obstacles to bringing extremists to trial. It will also look at ways of making more use of existing remedies such antisocial behaviour orders.

The drive will be boosted by the £130 million pot of new funds that Lord Goldsmith has secured for his department for the next three years. Most of this, he said, would go on prosecutors and making the criminal justice system more effective. “The key to this is to bring prosecutors and police together so they can share experience and share expertise and produce a co-ordinated criminal justice strategy to deal with extremists,” he said.

The City has already signalled that it is ready to launch its own counter-attack by offering a £25 million bounty for information leading to the conviction of extremists.The National Association of Pension Funds, whose members control £650 billion, are recruiting six top names from British business to spearhead the campaign.

Leading animal rights groups gave warning yesterday that they are also ready to use the courts to challenge any new laws that they believe are draconian. The first test could come soon if David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, bans an American animal rights militant from coming to Britain next month.

Home Office officials are studying reports that suggest Jerry Vlasak backs the murder of vivisectionists. However, Dr Vlasak, speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, denied the claims.

“All I am saying, in a historical context, violence has been used against us as animal rights campaigners and against the animals and is no different from us using violence on the other side.

“I don’t see the animal rights struggle for liberation as any different from any other struggle that has gone on throughout history.”

Dr Vlasak, who has been jailed in the US, works closely with a number of leading British animal rights groups including Speak, which is fighting to close Oxford University’s new scientific centre, and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty which has led the campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, the animal research company.

He is due to address an international conference in Kent which some critics claim is a training camp for militants. However, Kent Police say they have not received any complaints about the planned conference.

Robert Cogswell, a spokesman for Speak described Mr Blunkett’s banning threat as a “rash knee-jerk reaction”.

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