ANIMAL rights extremists face instant bans from neighbourhoods where scientists and research company staff live under measures to be unveiled on Friday.

Police will be given powers to remove protesters from the public highway outside private homes as the Government tries to restore confidence in the biotech industry.

Home Office ministers are pledging to jail those who intimidate biotech workers by post, e-mail or spreading malicious lies about them.

A source said: “We have been looking at new ways we can strengthen the law to limit the protests outside people’s homes. It might mean being able to drag protesters away and then put some kind of restriction on them coming back to the area.”

However, the initiative was greeted with deep scepticism by the City last night. Victims whose homes and families have been attacked by animal rights extremists in recent months say ministers have betrayed them over promises of protection.

Jean Pierre Garnier, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, urged the Government to act swiftly to prevent vital research investment being lost to Britain. “There are a handful of people who are stopping progress in the UK and this cannot be tolerated,” he said, adding that GSK, the UK’s biggest drug maker, spent “millions and millions” of pounds each year on extra security for its scientists and executives.

“About three years ago our general counsel had to leave his house because he had young children,” M Garnier said. “Those people scared the bejesus out of his family.”

The managing director of one pharmaceutical firm, who has suffered 14 months of violent harassment, told The Times how David Blunkett hade never even replied to the last plea for help from a powerul consortium of Japanese research companies.

“I have taken part in so-called crisis meetings with Home Office ministers and they do nothing while the violence gets steadily worse and scientists quit this country,” he said.

“One Home Office minister blamed the police for not doing their job. But the Special Branch tells us it’s the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service who are letting these terrorists get away with it, so who is responsible?”

A record number of companies are seeking injunctions against violent extremists. Of six directors who won injunctions in the past year, two have left the industry in despair.

Those who stayed have had to hire bodyguards. Security men shadow their children to school and family homes have been turned into high-tech fortresses with bomb-proof windows and CCTV cameras.

One company which recently spent more than £200,000 obtaining a court injunction barring violent protests outside directors’ homes say the extremists simply shifted their intimidation to the most junior members of staff.

“Two young women secretaries were sent threatening letters and the next evening they found masked protesters outside their homes,” a senior director said. “Nobody is safe from these fanatics anymore”.

He was contacted by Special Branch detectives in May 2003 and told he and his wife had been named as targets on an extremist website. Days later death threats began arriving in the mail signed by the Animal Liberation Front and Animal Rights Militia.

Masked demonstrators met him as he arrived home shouting obscenities through loudhailers. Slogans were daubed on his walls and paint stripper poured on his car. His street in South London had to be sealed off after a suspect bomb was planted which army disposal experts described as “a very elaborate hoax”.

The director spent more than £100,000 to secure his home with a 12 ft wall, CCTV, bomb- proof windows, steel gates and an incendiary-proof letterbox but still the attacks continued. “We felt as if we were living in a fort, and could be hit at any time.” he said.

Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, revealed in The Times that a team of specialist prosecutors will try to bring the ringleaders to trial.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said dozens of companies are now seeking private injunctions from animal rights extremists.

RIGHTS AND WRONGS

Animal rights groups include the Animal Liberation Front, Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.

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