Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions have been brought under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 in each of the last three years, in relation to the creation or sharing of online content relating to animal welfare.

Animal cruelty in England and Wales is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Similar legislation is in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Sentencing Council recently updated its sentencing guidelines for animal cruelty offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. The guidelines include ‘use of technology to record, publicise or promote cruelty’ as an aggravating factor for animal cruelty offences under sections 4-8 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. The guidelines specify that this includes circulating details/photographs/videos etc of the offence on social media. There is no central recording of the use of such factors in sentencing.

The number of prosecutions in England and Wales for animal cruelty offences under sections 4-8 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 for the last three years for which we have full data is set out in the table below:

Depending on its nature, digital transmission of animal cruelty content may be an offence under different legislation, such as (but not exclusively) the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and the Communications Act 2007.