Animal Torture: Online Videos

Lord Vaux of Harrowden Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I have the numbers prosecuted for animal cruelty in my notes somewhere; I will happily write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, at the moment the law we have been talking about has been preventing those who are perpetrating the harm and publishing it, but is there any merit in going after the people who are watching it and paying for it and have it on their computers—the consumers who ultimately are generating the harm at the end?

[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.