My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 180, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron. I will also explain why I put forward
Amendment 180A. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who pursued this issue with considerable force through her Question in the House.
There is clearly an omission in the Bill. One of its primary aims is to protect children from harmful online content, and animal cruelty content causes harm to the animals involved and, critically, to the people who view it, especially children. In Committee, in the Question and today, we have referred to the polling commissioned by the RSPCA, which found that 23% of 10 to 18 year-olds had seen animal cruelty on social media sites. I am sure that the numbers have increased since that survey in 2018. A study published in 2017 found—if evidence were needed—that:
“There is emerging evidence that childhood exposure to maltreatment of companion animals is associated with psychopathology in childhood and adulthood.”
The noble Baroness made an extremely good case, and I do not think that I need to add to it. When the Bill went through the Commons, assurances were given by the former Minister, Damian Collins, who acknowledged that the inclusion of animal cruelty content in the Bill deserves further consideration as the Bill progresses through its parliamentary stages. We need to keep up that pressure, and we will be very much supporting the noble Baroness if she asks for the opinion of the House.
Turning to my Amendment 180A, like the noble Baroness, I pay tribute to the Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition, which is a very large coalition of organisations. We face a global extinction crisis which the UK Government themselves have pledged to reverse. Algorithmic amplification tools and social media recommendation engines have driven an explosive growth in online wildlife trafficking. A National Geographic article from 2020 quoted US wildlife officials describing the dizzying scale of the wildlife trade on social media. The UK’s national wildlife crime units say that cyber-enabled wildlife crime has become their priority focus, since virtually all wildlife cases they now investigate have a cyber component to them, usually involving social media or e-commerce platforms. In a few clicks it is easy to find pages, groups and postings selling wildlife products made from endangered species, such as elephant ivory, rhino horn, pangolin scales and marine turtle shells, as well as big cats, reptiles, birds, primates and insects for the exotic pet trade. This vast, unregulated trade in live animals and their parts is not only illegal but exacerbates the risk of another animal/human spillover event such as the ones that caused Ebola, HIV and the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to accepting the animal welfare amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, which I hope they do, the Government should also add offences under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species Regulations 2018 to Schedule 7 to the Bill. This would definitely help limit the role of social media platforms in enabling wildlife trafficking, helping to uphold the UK’s commitments to tackling global wildlife crime.