Online Harms
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(4 days, 17 hours ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.
There is no shortage of online harms demanding our attention. I have spoken before about children buying illegal drugs that are openly advertised on social media, the flood of harmful eating disorder content reaching young people, and Ofcom not holding social media companies to account, although it has increased powers to do so under the Online Safety Act. Today, though, I want to focus on another deeply disturbing trend. Men are secretly filming women on nights out and profiting by posting the videos online. These accounts mask themselves as “nightlife content” or “walking tours”, but the videos tell a completely different story; they fixate on women in dresses and skirts, often filmed from behind and from low or intrusive angles. These women have not consented—in most cases, they do not know that they are being filmed—and the scale is staggering. The BBC found that videos such as these have been viewed more than 3 billion times in just three years.
Once they have been uploaded, the abuse begins, with comment after comment dripping with misogyny:
“Look at how these ladies are dressed, no wonder they get attacked”
followed by a laughing emoji,
“They belong to the streets”,
and “Easy meat”. Hundreds of misogynistic comments like these flood the replies beneath nearly every video. This vile practice has victims, and the impact is real. Women who have been filmed in this way say that they no longer feel safe to go out; they feel watched, exposed, vulnerable, distressed and harassed. They no longer enjoy a night out or being in public. We must be clear that secretly filming women in this way is deeply degrading and predatory and must be stopped.
Right now, the law is failing. In 2024, a man was arrested on suspicion of stalking and harassment for this kind of behaviour, but no further action was taken due to limitations in the current legislation. As of now, there is no provision in law to prosecute for covert filming of this nature. This abuse sits in a legal grey area between several different crimes, including voyeurism and harassment, giving this type of video the space to grow. Existing voyeurism offences are framed around private acts or taking intimate images. Harassment laws were not designed to address the recording and mass distribution of this kind of content, so perpetrators slip through the cracks and the problem grows.
My Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would have created a specific criminal offence of secretly filming someone without their consent for sexual gratification, or to humiliate or distress them. The Government’s view was that this amendment was too broad. Yes, we must protect the freedom to film in public and legitimate journalism, but we cannot allow that to become an excuse for inaction, because right now women are being targeted, filmed and broadcast to millions without protection. Something must change.
We should look at harassment laws, including how the Public Order Act 1986 can be strengthened to tackle sex-based harassment, both offline and online, because harassment does not stop on the streets—it continues online, often indefinitely. It should be an offence to record and distribute footage of someone without their consent when they are targeted because of their sex and that material is used to objectify and humiliate them and subject them to misogynistic abuse. Women should not have to wonder every time they go out whether they will wake up the next morning to find themselves plastered across the internet in the most distressing and degrading way. It is not beyond the Government’s power to fix this issue, and I urge them to listen and to close this gap in the law, to protect women from this vile misogynistic harassment.
Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Bedfordshire for securing this important debate.
Online harms are systemic, they are scaled, and they are producing real-world consequences, as we have seen. Social media is now the environment in which young people grow up—it is almost universal when children enter secondary school. According to a consultation by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, 81% of 10 to 12-year-olds are on social media, and 86% have accounts. The Youth Select Committee also did a study on youth violence and social media back in 2024, and found that 97% of 13 to 17-year-olds were online and that 70% of them see real-world violence online. That is a huge number of statistics, but they demonstrate the fact that social media is now in every young person’s bedroom, in their hand and in their pocket.
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore from the University of Cambridge told me that adolescent brains are highly sensitive to the social environment, and the social media companies are probably aware of this. Adolescents’ brains have heightened neuroplasticity, and this will continue until their mid or late 20s. During adolescence, young people are trying to find identity and belonging, and I fear that the tech companies are exploiting this.
Where can we see evidence of harm? The National Education Union did a study called “Big Tech’s Little Victims”, in which researchers created fictional accounts and spent half an hour each day on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. They found that harmful content appeared within three minutes, and often immediately. Young people in my constituency say, “I do not want to see this harmful content anymore,” yet they are still shown it, so what is going on?
The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Bedfordshire mentioned the “Inside the Rage Machine” documentary, which I have seen a number of times. I am absolutely horrified at what the whistleblowers have revealed.
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Lady is making a very powerful speech about how young people, whose brains are still being formed, are being bombarded with online content. May I just let her know that my hon. Friend is actually the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom)? When she mentions him again, she might correct that.
Dr Sullivan
My apologies to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom).
I was speaking about “Inside the Rage Machine”. What people have witnessed is remarkable. The documentary makers found that serious exploitation cases were not being prioritised by TikTok, and that algorithms were repeatedly pushing harmful content.
It is not as simple as saying that we must ban children from social media; we need a suite of measures. The core issue is that young people, who are forming their identities, are vulnerable. Addictive algorithms are designed to maximise time and engagement, and they prioritise provocation instead of the truth. Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary on the manosphere is an incredibly powerful and timely contribution to the debate, and he shows us that the online world is like a gold rush in the wild west. The approach of “hook, identity, monetise” drives profits, with streaming platforms like YouTube rewarding people who spout abominable things. There is a business model behind this, and I think we are all very much aware that we need to do something about it.
Harmful content spreads across platforms, so we need to be very clear about any ban on social media. Last week, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee looked at the ban in Australia. We learned that because Australia defined which social media companies were to be included, other companies took their place. We can learn from that and it can feed into the Government’s consultation. We have to make the legislation stronger. Bans have limits, because they can be bypassed, as we see in Australia. They also shift the responsibility to the user. Why can we not shift the responsibility to the companies? We should not be banning children from social media; we should be banning the companies from exploiting our children.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
The latest Louis Theroux documentary for Netflix, “Inside the Manosphere”, was deeply shocking to many of us who watched it. But it was not remotely shocking for the millions of teenagers to whom his subjects are well known. It was not shocking to my three twenty-something sons; it was not shocking to the boys in the playground; it was not shocking to Gen Z or Gen Alpha; and it was not shocking for children in primary schools, let alone in secondary schools.
That is why this online harms debate should involve everyone, particularly the young people in whose name and on whose behalf we often make laws in this place. Their synapses are dulled to this stuff and their feeds are full of it, which in turn means that the premium for even more shock is higher. Outrage and extremism are hardwired into this business model.
“Inside the Manosphere” exposed that many of these social media influencers are themselves deeply damaged boys, often with a resentment about fathers who were either absent or violent, or both. They project themselves as pro-men, but in doing so they feel the need to project themselves as anti-women. And they are not just anti-women—that is a mild term—but they are virulently, disgustingly misogynistic. They feed off the pornography that, sadly, is seen by all too many of our young boys these days.
What also shocked me, however, as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) pointed out, was just how casual the antisemitism propagated by many of those in the manosphere was.
We saw a chap called Myron Gaines say,
“LOUIS IS A DIRTY J-E-W.”
Louis Theroux is not Jewish, by the way—not that that matters. At one point, another manosphere influencer, Harrison Sullivan, imitates Louis Theroux and leers that he is
“just sat there with his Jew fingers.”
Another of the manosphere influencers blames Jews for feminism, homosexuality and even
“vibrations that are going to negatively bring you down”.
In the conspiracy theory-ridden rabbit hole of the internet, all this is normalised. I thank the Antisemitism Policy Trust for its work in exposing just how much this vile racism has exploded online, and Elon Musk and X share responsibility for much of that. We must take much tougher action against tech giants who are literally profiting from this hatred. Antisemitism is often described as the oldest hatred, but misogyny is just as ancient a hatred. That is why I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who stood up to Grok and Musk when they flouted British laws and put British women and children at risk with those nudification apps.
I am equally proud that my party has been calling out Reform—none of whose Members is present today—for its pledge to repeal the Online Safety Act. I would like to know which protections for children Reform MPs would remove and what, if anything, they would put in their place.
I would also like to know why George Galloway’s Workers party took £5,000 in political donations at the last general election—an election in which I partook in Rochdale—from Andrew Tate’s brother, Tristan.
Wera Hobhouse
Can I quickly take the hon. Gentleman back to when he said he was proud of the action his Labour Government have taken? For a long time while they were in opposition, his colleagues advocated making misogyny a hate crime. I assume it was in their manifesto, but I am not quite clear about that. He mentions misogyny as one of the vile things that happen all the time in the manosphere. Why does he not press his Government more to make it a hate crime?
Paul Waugh
The Minister for Safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), has repeatedly emphasised the need to crack down on and outlaw misogyny, as have many of my colleagues. There is definitely more work to do on that, but it is a key part of our violence against women and girls strategy.
It was a pleasure to meet the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign last week—including Zack George, aka Steel from “Gladiators”, whom many Members will also have met—to hear why we need further action to protect our kids from the harm that social media can cause. As the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) has already mentioned, harm arises not only from content, but from design features such as algorithmic amplification and endless scroll—features that go beyond a simple age-based ban.
We need to help parents who are desperate for support in combating the daily nightmare of wresting back control from their children’s phones and computers. Suicide ideation, self-harm, pornography, animal cruelty, child sex abuse, anti-Muslim hatred and anti-Jewish hatred are all things that we want to protect our youngsters from seeing online, but we feel powerless in the face of the outrage economy. It is time to stop that sense of powerlessness.
Like the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, I want to praise the BBC’s recent documentary “Inside the Rage Machine”, which reported whistleblowers claiming that Meta made decisions to allow more harmful content on people’s feeds simply because internal research into its algorithms showed that outrage fuelled engagement and monetisation. A TikTok employee gave the BBC rare access to the company’s internal user complaints dashboards, as well as other evidence of staff being instructed to prioritise several cases involving politicians rather than a series of reports of harmful posts featuring children.
I would like to promote the great work that Rochdale borough safeguarding children partnership does to allow parents to access the right tools to protect their children. Other councils across the country are doing similarly great work—solutions are at hand. The Government’s new media literacy action plan should help us all to build resilience against hatred, and the Education Secretary’s recent guidance to schools to be phone free was very welcome indeed.
The Government’s consultation on social media is another huge step forward in creating a healthy relationship between children and the internet. We need to test all the options presented in the consultation so that decisions can be truly evidence based and delivery can be rolled out as effectively as possible. We need to balance the upsides of life online for young people—the friendship groups, the specialised help, and the need to protect free speech—against the very clear downsides.
Finally, we also need to address the offline issues that are often turbo-charged online. For example, why is it that these guys in the manosphere are so popular in the first place? There is the provocation, the riskiness, the sophisticated editing, the addictive nature of their output, the justification that it is “just jokes”, and the get-rich-quick con merchantry of it all. We need to ask how we can provide alternative role models for our boys and young men. How can we help their mental health? How can we repair their trauma? How can we tackle the lack of fulfilling jobs, careers and housing that is so often at the root of scapegoating—whether that is the scapegoating of women, Jews, Muslims, migrants, or their own lack of opportunities?
Online Harm: Child Protection
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Kanishka Narayan)
It is a pleasure to respond to this debate, not least to further my education in my personal passion area of parliamentary procedure.
Let me begin by responding to the motion, and then I will turn to the substance of the debate. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) will accept that no Government could accept a motion such as that proposed by the Liberal Democrats. The motion goes against the Standing Orders of the House, which state that the Government as elected by the people control the Order Paper, apart from specific exemptions such as Opposition days. The motion would give the Liberal Democrats free rein to schedule the business on 9 March. Today they introduced a Bill. It is still not available to Members across the House, yet they are asking the House to hand them control of business to complete all stages of the Bill within a day. That is no way to make complex changes to the law in this area.
This is not just a procedural outrage; more than that I am sorry to see the Liberal Democrats join the Conservative party yet again in their usual coalition of putting political desperation on this question ahead of the interests of British children and families. I urge the Liberal Democrats to forget this approach, and to take part in the Government’s consultation, which is a true attempt at engaging across parties and across the country, so that we find the right solution for children and parents. This Government have already set out a way forward that considers those vital issues in a responsible way, and allows for swift action in response. That is how we will give children the childhood that they deserve and prepare them for the future.
Wera Hobhouse
I do not know where the Minister has been, but my inbox has been inundated by families and parents who are calling for action. We are responding to the request of our constituents to take action. Do the Government not see the urgency with which we need to take action?
Kanishka Narayan
The Government are seeing both urgency and responsibility in the correspondence that we are receiving and the consultation we are engaging with, not the desperate lurch to a specific answer that the Liberal Democrats are exemplifying in this instance. I want to take this opportunity to set out our approach.
Julia Lopez
I appreciate where the hon. Member is coming from. I do not think it is wrong to seek evidence and ask for people’s views, but the Prime Minister should be honest about what he wants to do. The problem is that he has been floating various opinions, and he is being buffeted by Labour MPs and by the Opposition and others. If he does not think this is the right approach, he should feel confident in saying so. He has said a whole range of different things about this, and the Government are seeking to launch a consultation, but nobody actually knows what precisely is being consulted on.
If Labour MPs were honest with themselves, I think they would recognise that. I suspect they are having very serious conversations with the party’s Whips, saying, “Well, actually, we would like to know what the Prime Minister does think about this issue, because we’re not convinced by this consultation—we think it’s kicking the issue into the long grass, and we’re worried about the length of time that will mean before we get legislation to protect children from various challenges online.” That is the very reason why the Minister has stood up before them today to say, “We are probably going to do something—very definitely, maybe—in the summer.” He is saying that because the pressure is growing from Labour MPs. It is being briefed out that the Government are going to bring forward amendments to the Bill because they are being buffeted into doing so.
The problem is that nobody knows what this Prime Minister believes. On every single issue for the Government at the moment, and despite the very large Labour majority, this Prime Minister is being buffeted around, and that is the problem.
Wera Hobhouse
I am very much enjoying the hon. Member’s speech, and I am wondering why she therefore cannot support our motion this evening.
Julia Lopez
I set out clearly at the beginning of my speech why we cannot support the motion, which is effectively a blank cheque. Notwithstanding the fact that the hon. Member for Twickenham tried to set it out in her speech, nobody actually knows what the Lib Dems are trying to do here. The proposal before us is that the Liberal Democrats take control of the Order Paper and then can say whatever they like on internet governance. I am sorry, but I do not think that is the way to conduct ourselves in Parliament. There have to be clearer proposals.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Across the country, the dangerous synthetic drug Spice is being brazenly marketed to children over social media. Many vulnerable young people believe that they are buying the less harmful, though still illegal, drug THC only to discover, too late, that what they have been sold is a far more potent and unpredictable substance. In schools, the consequences are already visible. One in six vapes confiscated from pupils now contains Spice—one in six! If we walk through parts of our towns and cities, we see the human cost: Spice users slumped in doorways, trapped in a semi-conscious state, stripped of dignity and control. How terrifying it is that this drug is no longer confined to our streets and prisons, and has entered our classrooms.
Children are collapsing in school corridors. Some are rushed to intensive care and others begin a battle with addiction that may follow them for life. Spice is not simply another illegal drug. Its extreme potency and addictive grip is a fast track to exploitation and criminality. It is always a tragedy when someone falls victim to substance abuse, but when it is an uninformed child who has been misled and targeted over social media, it is not just tragic; it is a profound failure to protect.
I have raised the issue in the House and with this Government repeatedly over the past year and a half, but in that time the situation facing vulnerable children has not improved, but deteriorated. Gone are the days when a young person had to meet a dealer in a dark alley to buy drugs. Today, a child can purchase them from their bedroom, with a few taps on a phone. The marketplace has moved online and our children are paying the price. But do not just take my word for it. The Metropolitan police have warned about children accessing illicit vapes through social media platforms, such as Snapchat and Telegram. A recent BBC investigation revealed how effortlessly an illegal vape laced with Spice can be purchased over Snapchat.
This is not a few small-scale individuals. We are dealing with a global, industrial supply chain, with major chemical suppliers in China providing materials to markets in the UK, the European Union, the United States and Gulf states. Researchers at the University of Bath have identified nearly 10,000 accounts involved in the supply and distribution of Spice, many using TikTok to advertise and communicate. I have met a number of Ministers about this issue, most recently the Minister for Online Safety, who is in his place. I know he understands the scale of the problem and is sympathetic to our concerns, but words are not enough: we need action.
Selling drugs is already a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, and Ofcom has a statutory duty to enforce that. Yet despite clear, sustained evidence that these substances are being openly advertised and sold online, we have not seen the decisive enforcement that the law requires. Instead, the burden is falling on members of the public to report these accounts, effectively asking individual citizens to do the regulator’s job for them.
What happens when an account is removed? Within hours, a near identical profile reappears. An account named “Spice Sales 1” is reported and taken down, only to resurface as “Spice Sales 2”, then “Spice Sales 3” and so on. The name changes slightly, the branding shifts marginally, but the criminality remains the same. This revolving door of reactive takedowns is not a strategy—it is an admission that the current system is not working. If a shop in Bath were openly selling drugs through its front window, the police would intervene immediately. There would be no hesitation and no suggestion that the public should simply keep reporting it. So why, when the shopfront is digital and when the customers are children, are we not treating this with the same seriousness? It is time that we confronted this reality. Social media companies have developed incredibly sophisticated algorithms, as we have already heard this afternoon, that are capable of targeting advertisements to individuals with remarkable precision. They know what we watch, what we like and what we linger on, so it cannot be beyond their capability to deploy artificial intelligence to detect and prevent the sale of illegal drugs on their platforms.
Active detection must replace endless reactive reporting. The technology and resources exist, and the evidence is overwhelming; what is missing is political will and enforcement. It is time to hold social media companies to account, because the safety of our children demands nothing less.
Chris Vince
This is a genuinely friendly intervention. I am raising this point because I know that the hon. Member does a lot to champion and support people with eating disorders. I am completely changing the subject, but does she think that the rise of social media and online platforms has had an increased impact on people with eating disorders?
Wera Hobhouse
I could go on forever about online harm, particularly with regard to eating disorders. It is Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and we will be having a debate on that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will attend that debate, as he can then raise that point again.
Today I am talking about spice and the responsibility of social media platforms and how we protect children. I therefore support the provision to bring in a Bill on protecting children from online harms, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). As I have said before, it is time for action; we can no longer dither and delay. I do not accept all the debates saying, “Oh! Process this, that and the other.” If we really mean it and are really serious about this issue, we need to act now. I am pleased that my party is prepared to act and show the public that we want change.
Mobile Phones and Social Media: Use by Children
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Liz Kendall
Absolutely. I was at Braunstone community primary school in my constituency not long ago, where I was shown the incredible power of AI to help teachers with lesson planning. One teacher told me that using it meant that he could free up 30 days a year to be present for his kids in school and his family at home. Teachers were also using AI tutors to help narrow the disadvantage gap between rich and poor kids. We need to look at the quality of screen time, so my hon. Friend’s point is very well made.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
After more than a year of raising the issue in this House, illegal drugs including spice are still being brazenly sold to children online. If that is not harm, I do not know what is. What are the Government doing to ensure that all powers under the Online Safety Act are being used by Ofcom to stop this appalling harm to children? If the legislation we have cannot deal with it, will the Secretary of State consider including in her consultation how we might stop this pernicious trade?
Liz Kendall
The hon. Member raises an extremely important issue. I have put on record my determination for Ofcom to use the powers it has to act swiftly; I have made that very clear in private and publicly. I am more than happy to hear what more the hon. Lady thinks could be done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Marsha De Cordova
I commend my hon. Friend for all the work she is doing on this important issue, which affects many constituencies, and it was a pleasure to meet her and members of that residents association. We all know that many managing agents behave in ways that are not fit for purpose. It is absolutely right that we need legislation to deal with unscrupulous managing agents, because things cannot continue in the current vein. I thank her for all the work she is doing.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Marsha De Cordova
At the General Synod in February, I called for a fully independent model for safeguarding. Synod did not adopt that approach but did commit to undertaking some detailed work that would ensure it could work towards that sort of model. As I said earlier in my responses, it is vital that the Church seeks to begin to restore and rebuild trust and confidence in it.
Wera Hobhouse
I thank the hon. Lady for that answer. Horribly and tragically, one of my constituents was a victim of abuse in the Church of England. We must never forget that there are victims and survivors involved here, and they were dismayed when earlier this year the Church of England’s governing body rejected a fully independent safeguarding model to deal with abuse cases. The Church should not fall behind other organisations on safeguarding. The hon. Lady has given me her answer already, but can she reassure me that she will continue to push for a fully independent body, as that must be our goal?
Marsha De Cordova
Absolutely. I was at that meeting of Synod and it was disappointing that my preferred model of full independence was not adopted. We owe it to those like the hon. Lady’s constituent, who was a victim and is now a survivor, to ensure that the Church works at pace towards a fully independent model for safeguarding.
Creative Industries
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Here’s to a vibrant performance art sector in every community across the UK. Whether we are talking about school plays, choirs or theatre, in pubs, nightclubs or concert halls, the opportunities that they provide for enjoyment and life-enriching moments cannot be underestimated, and they must be valued and supported. I will give some examples of the successes and challenges in my constituency of Bath, and they will be mirrored in other towns and cities. I hope this debate will help to make the case for more Government funding of the performing arts, a sector where more is needed.
The creative world is very diverse. Many organisations have always existed entirely within the private sector. Others are supported locally by council funding or nationally by the Arts Council. Patrons and sponsors have always existed in this space, but for the last decade they have been expected to replace public funding almost entirely. In Bath, this has narrowed the offer and put enormous strain on organisers to balance the books. The finances of far too many organisations have become hand to mouth. Even in Bath, with its strong network of patrons and supporters of the creative industries, the pressure to balance the books and keep the show on the road makes for a long hard struggle.
According to the Campaign for the Arts, DCMS core funding of arts and cultural organisations has fallen by 18% since 2010. Equity’s analysis shows a 16% real-terms cuts in funding by arts councils nationwide, and that is further compounded by nearly £1 billion of cuts to arts and culture funding by local government across the UK. A decade ago, the big events in Bath received core funding from the council and sometimes the Arts Council, but no more. What is the result? Moles, the famous performance space for emerging talent in the centre of Bath, has closed, and despite the best efforts of local campaigners and the new Music Venue Trust, it is unlikely to open again.
The Bath Festival has amalgamated its musical and literary festivals into one and tries to de-risk its musical offer, but each year it gets harder. The Mission theatre successfully turned its buildings into a community asset and hopes to separate the finances of the building from all the experimental and small performances that take place in it, but each time the roof leaks or a window needs replacing, it entirely depends on local donors. The Bath Philharmonia came to Parliament to highlight the work it does with young carers, but none of that could happen without long-term financial backing. These are just some examples of the great efforts made by the creatives in Bath. Some will come through, but others will not survive the retirement of one or two key people or the loss of core funding. How can trusts and patrons be expected to keep these events and community venues alive single-handedly with so little Government support?
The Secretary of State’s recent announcement of £60 million for the creative industries is welcome, but it will do little to reverse the deep cuts of the last two decades. More importantly, funding must not be provided on a piece-by-piece basis. I reiterate what the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) said on this earlier. It should be devised as part of wider industrial strategy integrated with the reform of Arts Council England and a coherent and long-term growth strategy for regional arts. The Resolution Foundation’s state-of-the-nation report, “Ending Stagnation,” argues that the creative industries are a “rising British strength” that should form one part of
“the bedrock for a growth strategy”.
Theatres, for example, make a significant contribution to local economies. For every £1 spent on theatre, another £1.40 is generated in the local economy. If the Government are focused on growth, the creative industries should be at the core of their strategy.
I reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) has already said: the UK now spends only 0.2% of GDP on arts and culture, compared with a European average of 0.5%. That puts us among the lowest public expenditure on arts and culture in Europe.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
I know my hon. Friend has been to the cultural mecca of Taunton in Somerset, so will she credit the town council? She talks about long-term funding, and Taunton town council is putting £300,000 of funding into the arts over three years, including for the amazing Gaumont project to restore the Mecca bingo hall as a theatre.
Wera Hobhouse
I congratulate Taunton town council on putting that money into the arts. That is absolutely what is needed, but many councils struggle to balance the books and have to make very difficult decisions.
To deliver on the full potential of the UK’s competitive advantage in the arts and entertainment, additional public investment is required. We need to understand why we are so far behind the rest of Europe in terms of funding and take urgent action to correct that. Core funding is key to the resurgence of Bath’s creative sector, and of creative industries across the country. I hope this new Government can turn the page on the constant cuts to our creative industries and ensure that every community has a vibrant creative sector for all to enjoy.
Animal Testing
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Caroline. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on leading the debate in such a detailed, passionate and knowledgeable way.
My constituents, like all others, are passionate about animals, and many have contacted me to oppose their use in laboratory testing. It is upsetting for all those who love animals to learn that, in laboratories across the country, so many animals—including dogs, which we often describe as our best friends—are subjected to awful experiments under the guise of the public good.
It is often said that the UK is a nation of animal lovers, and I think that that is absolutely true. The UK was the first country to instigate animal protection laws, in 1822, and the first to set up an animal welfare charity, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Public opinion is clear, and nearly 100 of my constituents have signed the petition to end the use of animals for toxicity tests and to prioritise non-animal methods, or NAMs. There is enough evidence now that non-animal methods can be more accurate, more cost-effective and quicker than traditional animal models.
Although researchers are already required to use non-animal methods wherever possible, concerns have been raised that the process of checking whether NAMs have been used is not rigorous enough. Cruelty Free International has found cases of animal testing being used despite non-animal alternatives being available. It is therefore disappointing that the Government’s response to these petitions is that there will be no change in the law. Although we should all welcome the fact that we have improved our animal welfare laws over the years, we should not be complacent. At a time when new alternatives and non-animal methods are being developed, we should embrace this opportunity for leadership and to make regulations more stringent.
I am sure we all want to minimise the use of animals in scientific experimentation and the cosmetic industry as much as possible, including by funding research into alternatives. We have already heard about Lush and its very successful reception at the end of last year. There are enough companies that are really promoting the use of alternative methods, so we should really listen to industry on this issue.
We know that animal testing can be unreliable and unpredictable and that it causes unnecessary suffering. Humans differ considerably from animals, so the use of animals often leads to poor results. The regulatory requirement that animals be used before human trials is more than 70 years old. Reviewing that, and removing the needless suffering of animals, will finally bring scientific research into the 21st century.
Of course, there are also methods of digital testing, so we really have moved a long way since the law was last revised. A growing number of human-relevant methods are already being developed. Those are made up of innovative technologies that are helping to deliver better results for humans. Despite that, there is a continued misconception that animal testing provides a gold standard for the regulatory approval of a product.
An expert advisory taskforce could play an important role in exploring animal-free innovation. We should also review all animal procedures to remove duplicative and wasteful methods and to prevent the retesting on animals of any material, chemical, food or drug currently in use. Retesting should be conducted using only non-animal methods or existing human data.
The Government have responded to the petition to ban any testing on dogs by saying that welfare standards are already high and that testing would still continue in other countries. Those are valid responses, yet I think that we can do better and provide even more leadership to other countries. That other countries continue to use dogs is not a good reason as to why we should do so in this country.
Although we should be proud that the UK has some of the highest welfare standards in the world, we must build on our robust record and lead by example. To achieve that, greater funding is required to support the development of new technologies and new, innovative testing methods. Sadly, Government funding for such methods currently represents less than 1% of total UK biomedical research. We can do better, and I would particularly like to hear from the Minister on this point. We know that increased research funding often pays back multiple times to the economy—we have had a debate on research funding in this Chamber before—so investment makes good sense.
There is no excuse for animal cruelty, and we must do all we can to ensure that the humane treatment of animals is upheld everywhere. The moral and scientific case for tighter regulation of laboratory testing is clear. It is time that the Government listened to increasing numbers of scientists and voters.
EU Programmes
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Michelle Donelan
I know that my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour does a great deal of work on this as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, with a keen interest in this area. We have a fantastic track record when it comes to Arctic science, being fourth in the world, and we want to climb up that league table. Membership of Horizon Europe will certainly help us to achieve that.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The announcement that the UK will rejoin Horizon is very welcome, and I am very pleased about it, but there is so much more to be done to restore academic co-operation with the EU, especially for students. The Turing scheme is currently on a very sad par with the Erasmus programme. The University of Bath, as the right hon. Member will know, is a science university. As University of Bath students point out, the Turing scheme requires universities to forecast where students will go before their bid for funding, a year in advance. It restricts the freedom of students and creates a major challenge for universities. Will she work with the students’ union at the University of Bath to ensure that Turing will work as smoothly as Erasmus?
Michelle Donelan
I am more than happy to work with the Department for Education and co-ordinate a conversation with the University of Bath, but it is important to note that the Turing scheme is different from Erasmus; it is better. It is global in nature. It is also more inclusive. The statistics on the Erasmus scheme show that it particularly helped children of families from middle-class backgrounds, whereas the Turing scheme is much more accessible.