Hounslow's European MP has backed a ban on primate testing.

Labour MEP Robert Evans, whose UK base is in Feltham, and three other MEPs started the campaign for a Europe-wide commitment to end experiments on primates.

They join 179 Euro MPs from each European country who have signed the Written Declaration, which calls for urgent action to end experiments on apes and wild monkeys.

They want the European Parliament to set a timetable to ban the practice as it did for cosmetics testing on animals.

Robert Evans MEP said: "I am convinced the time has now come for politicians to take an uncompromised stand to achieve a ban on all non-human primate testing."

The campaign aims to secure the backing of 393 MEPs by September and is being stepped up by Animal Defenders International (ADI) in the run up to the Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg starting on July 9.

This week an ADI report on the use of primates in experiments was hand delivered to MEPs who have not signed it yet.

More than 10,000 monkeys are used in European laboratories every year and about 1,000 of them are snatched terrified from the wild.

The ADI said there are also plans by European Commission to build a centralised chimpanzee super lab.

Jan Creamer, ADI chief executive, thanked Londoners who have already sent postcards to their MPs.

He said: "We now have the backing of 50 per cent of the capital's MEPs and will be doing our best to persuade the rest in the coming weeks.

"Apes and monkeys are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, we can clearly comprehend how these animals suffer inside laboratories.

"These tests can and must be replaced by reliable human-based research."

A survey showed that 80 per cent of Europeans think primate experiments are unacceptable.