The government will strengthen legislation to combat animal rights extremists with new measures to halt the economic damage their campaigns cause.

Talks have begun between the Department of Trade and Industry and the biosciences industry to formulate plans for protection from protests that harm them financially.

This year has seen a rise in attacks on companies providing services to institutions and pharmaceutical companies involved in animal testing. In January, plans for a new primate research laboratory at Cambridge University were shelved after security costs pushed its price up from £24 million to more than £32 million.

A new five-year plan for R&D from the DTI includes promises to make the UK the most hospitable place in the world for all types of scientific research and to stop animal rights extremism.

Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said: "We're sending a strong signal to scientists around the world that the UK is the place to come to carry out research in leading-edge areas such as nanotechnology and stem cell research."

New scientific technologies, including nanotechnology, will receive investments totalling nearly £400 million over the five years covered by the plan.

Creating Wealth from Knowledge also expands on government proposals first announced in May. Research groups had called for a single, new piece of legislation to clarify what can be done to counteract the activists, but the government has instead opted for a range of measures.

Harassment laws will be strengthened to deal with campaigns aimed at groups of people who work for the same company and the police will be given powers to arrest individuals protesting outside someone's home and to ban protestors from the vicinity of a person's home for three months.

Staff working for drug testing firms, as well as those involved in academic research, have been subjected to long-running campaigns of harassment, with Huntingdon Life Sciences a particular target.

The company's employees, customers, suppliers and financial backers have all been targeted and the police and Home Office are currently working together to identify, prosecute and deter the groups behind the attacks.

Legal measures to protect against animal rights attacks are increasingly being adopted. Earlier this year work on a new biomedical research facility at Oxford University was halted when Montpelier, the main building contractor, pulled out following threats to it by protesters.

This month the university won a High Court injunction against a number of animal rights groups, prohibiting them from coming within 50 yards of the building site and the premises of its suppliers and contractors, and within 100 yards of the homes of anyone working for them.

Dr Simon Festing, executive director of RDS, formerly the Research Defence Society, said: "The research community is pleased that the courts are waking up to the gravity of animal rights extremism. Researchers and suppliers should be allowed to do their legitimate work without relentless intimidation and harassment."

The government is to provide an extra £300,000 to the National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, doubling its budget to search for alternatives to animal experiments.

pharmafocus@wiley.co.uk