We were pleased to contribute to Ofcom’s recent Illegal Harms Further Consultation, using our expertise on the link between the abuse of animals and humans to support submissions from our colleagues at the RSPCA and SSPCA. Animal abuse and cruelty content can pose a significant risk to users of online services; as well as to the animals themselves, and is a significant concern to those working in this field.
Find out more below.
As the UK’s online safety regulator, Ofcom’s role is to provide codes and guidance to support regulated services to comply with their duties and deliver a safer life online for people in the UK.
In November 2023, Ofcom held an Illegal Harms Consultation. The Online Safety Act 2023 makes providers of online services legally responsible for keeping people safe when they’re online. Providers have new duties to protect people in the UK by assessing risks of harm and taking steps to address them. The Act lists over 130 ‘priority offences’. All providers will need to act to protect users from encountering content which amounts to one of these offences. More information about the Online Safety Act can be found here.
One of the priority offences in the Act is the animal cruelty offence. This offence was added at a fairly late stage to the Bill (which then became the Act), and due to the timings, Ofcom weren’t able to include it in their November 2023 consultation. Animal cruelty content can pose a significant risk to users of online services; as well as to the animals themselves.
This further consultation invites comments and evidence from all interested parties with the intention of strengthening Ofcom’s draft illegal harms codes of practice and guidance under the Online Safety Act by specifying animal cruelty and human torture as types of content that platforms must tackle. This includes guiding providers to help them make sure that they are assessing the risks of animal cruelty content appearing on their services where required, putting in place measures to mitigate these risks, and to make sure providers understand that they should take down content containing illegal animal cruelty and human torture content when they encounter it, even if the content is not fully captured by the priority offences outlined in the Act.
The Links Group raises awareness of the link between abuse of animals and abuse of people by providing research, resources and training to promote the safety of people and animals. We responded to Ofcom’s consultation using our knowledge, expertise and information gathered from:
- delivery of our services and training,
- supporting with cases of suspected animal abuse/non-accidental injury, including through the Non-Accidental Injury Helpline service provided by IVC Evidensia for all members of the veterinary team in the UK and beyond,
- trustees’ experiences of working alongside prosecutions, including in an expert witness role,
- knowledge of existing and forthcoming research.
The Links Group also supported the RSPCA’s and SSPCA’s responses to this consultation. We have strong relationships with both organisations via shared goals and the natural overlap in our work; and both the RSPCA and the SSPCA have worked with us to deliver our multi-agency training days for veterinary teams on non-accidental injury and the link between abuse of animals and abuse of people.
Given the Links Group’s collective expertise regarding the link between abuse of animals and abuse of humans, we have also offered further support in this area to Ofcom as required, and we look forward to seeing the outcome of this consultation due in December 2024.
