diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 368e9340b..db042cfcf 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Twisted>=10.0.0
 lxml
 pyOpenSSL
 cssselect>=0.9
-w3lib>=1.8.0
+w3lib>=1.13.0
 queuelib
 six>=1.5.2
 PyDispatcher>=2.0.5
diff --git a/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py b/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py
index da373eca2..72715dba7 100644
--- a/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py
+++ b/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py
@@ -8,7 +8,6 @@ from w3lib import html
 
 from scrapy.exceptions import NotConfigured
 from scrapy.http import HtmlResponse
-from scrapy.utils.response import _noscript_re, _script_re
 
 
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
@@ -89,8 +88,7 @@ def _has_ajaxcrawlable_meta(text):
     if 'content' not in text:
         return False
 
-    text = _script_re.sub(u'', text)
-    text = _noscript_re.sub(u'', text)
-    text = html.remove_comments(html.replace_entities(text))
+    text = html.remove_tags_with_content(text, ('script', 'noscript'))
+    text = html.replace_entities(text)
+    text = html.remove_comments(text)
     return _ajax_crawlable_re.search(text) is not None
-
diff --git a/scrapy/utils/response.py b/scrapy/utils/response.py
index d9e951463..deb5741be 100644
--- a/scrapy/utils/response.py
+++ b/scrapy/utils/response.py
@@ -3,7 +3,6 @@ This module provides some useful functions for working with
 scrapy.http.Response objects
 """
 import os
-import re
 import weakref
 import webbrowser
 import tempfile
@@ -31,17 +30,13 @@ def get_base_url(response):
     return _baseurl_cache[response]
 
 
-_noscript_re = re.compile(u'<noscript>.*?</noscript>', re.IGNORECASE | re.DOTALL)
-_script_re = re.compile(u'<script.*?>.*?</script>', re.IGNORECASE | re.DOTALL)
 _metaref_cache = weakref.WeakKeyDictionary()
 def get_meta_refresh(response):
     """Parse the http-equiv refrsh parameter from the given response"""
     if response not in _metaref_cache:
         text = response.text[0:4096]
-        text = _noscript_re.sub(u'', text)
-        text = _script_re.sub(u'', text)
         _metaref_cache[response] = html.get_meta_refresh(text, response.url,
-            response.encoding)
+            response.encoding, ignore_tags=('script', 'noscript'))
     return _metaref_cache[response]
 
 
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index d91bb6328..8387f81f4 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ setup(
     ],
     install_requires=[
         'Twisted>=10.0.0',
-        'w3lib>=1.8.0',
+        'w3lib>=1.13.0',
         'queuelib',
         'lxml',
         'pyOpenSSL',