ARIA: Scoping Our Planet Programme
Lord Grocott Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I am sorry; I have been told the clocks are not working. There has been a little bit of a mix-up but we will get there.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
I have a question for the Minister; I am pretty sure that the answer will be that he has no idea, and that will not be any reflection on him because I do not have any idea either. What has been the total cost to the public purse of the implementation of freedom of information legislation for all the numerous organisations, large and small, across the public sector?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I do not carry that figure in my head. I can tell my noble friend that ARIA has spent 300 hours over the past few months dealing with requests under the Environmental Information Regulations alone, so he can imagine the scale of requests that can come through other things. I am sure the cost of providing information requests to public bodies has been very high.
Animal Torture: Online Videos
Lord Grocott Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Viscount Camrose (Con)
Indeed. I stress that laws preventing these behaviours are already in existence, and the Online Safety Bill supports those laws in some sense. If content is illegal, platforms are obliged to take it down. If content creates a risk of harm to children, again, platforms are obliged to take it down. In the case of the largest platforms, the so-called category 1 platforms, if content violates their terms of service, they are obliged to take it down.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, if the Minister’s central argument is that we do not need any amendments to the current Bill because these offences already exist, surely the response is that they are clearly not working because, from all the evidence we have heard, this cruelty is continuing. If the existing legislation simply is not working, surely the option of providing new legislation is precisely what is required.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I do not accept either that the existing legislation is not working or that, if it is not, the way to fix it is to make an amendment that redirects the Online Safety Bill in such a dramatic and fundamental way.