Animal Torture: Online Videos

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I certainly agree that there is a problem. I am afraid that over the course of a year, the Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition documented about 5,500 individual links to videos containing animal cruelty on the major platforms—YouTube, Facebook and TikTok—but globally the number of views of those incidents exceeded 5 billion. So I agree that there is a problem but I do not accept that the solution to it is a radical change to the Online Safety Bill, as was debated in Committee. I am open to working with my colleagues in Defra on what a more effective solution might be.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Is the Minister aware that he is very lucky that my almost namesake, the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, is not in the House today, otherwise he would be in dead trouble?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I am grateful for it.