8 Dec 2025
Group of peers, including former RCVS president Prof Lord Trees, supports amendment to the current Crime and Policing Bill that would substantially expand range of acts prosecuted.
Allister Webb
Job Title
David Martin of the IVC Evidensia Welfare Working Group.
A senior clinician has welcomed new proposals that aim to strengthen the law dealing with the sexual abuse of animals.
A group of peers, including former RCVS president Professor Lord Trees, has supported an amendment to the current Crime and Policing Bill that would substantially expand the range of acts that can be prosecuted.
Government has so far declined to say whether it would accept the proposal, and officials have insisted all forms of abuse are considered “completely unacceptable”.
But the move was praised by IVC Evidensia’s group head of animal welfare, Dave Martin, during a recent London Vet Show presentation.
He said: “If this amendment gets passed, it will sort out the definition of animal sexual abuse to the definition that all of you in this room would have expected.”
The move came almost exactly a year after Dr Martin had used the same platform to call on the veterinary professions not to treat animal sexual abuse as a taboo subject.
Current laws only list sexual intercourse with an animal as a specific offence, meaning other acts that would be classed as offences against a human victim cannot be prosecuted unless they have been recorded.
The new amendment, tabled by the Conservative peer Lord Black of Brentwood, would mean any sexual activity involving an animal could be punished with up to five years in prison if dealt with by a crown court, up from a maximum of two years under the present law.
The amendment also proposes to give courts the power to bar offenders from owning or keeping animals – a power they already have in other welfare cases, but not in relation to sexual offences.
Prof Lord Trees, a cross-bencher, is one of three named sponsors for the amendment, along with the former Defra secretary Baroness Coffey and the Liberal Democrats’ Lord Goddard of Stockport.
The bill is currently going through its committee stage in the House of Lords, with a series of sessions on it planned for the coming weeks.
The Home Office said the amendment had yet to be considered by parliament, but added: “The Government regards any form of animal abuse as completely unacceptable”.
The LVS session also heard a separate amendment is seeking to ensure sexual offences against animals can only be dealt with by a crown court, meaning offenders would get more severe sentences.
But while he welcomed that part of the proposal, Dr Martin was critical of its use of the term “bestiality”, which he saw as a backward step.
He said: “We do need to be open as a profession that the correct terminology for this is not bestiality.
“It is animal sexual abuse in the same way it is child sexual abuse because this is an abusive act.”
