Drugging and Sexual Assault of Women

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend is right. As I have said already, these actions are criminal in United Kingdom and there is a duty on tech platforms to take down criminal activity or face severe fines. I also say to my noble friend that the Government are supporting Project Medusa, a collaborative effort between the National Crime Agency and German, Brazilian, Canadian, French, Hungarian, Dutch, Spanish and United States agencies and Europol to ensure that we break these gangs at source, take them down and pursue them for their criminal activity.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, as has just been outlined by the noble Baroness, drug-facilitated sexual assault appears to be a global phenomenon which is flourishing in the dark parts of the internet. One website with this content, with millions of visitors, had more than 20,000 videos, with hundreds of thousands of views, of this so-called “sleep content”—that is, women who are drugged and sexually assaulted. So I am pleased to hear the Minister’s response. So far, the national response to DFSA, including monitoring, reporting, investigating and prosecuting, has been described as inadequate. So will the Minister give an assurance that addressing these horrifying crimes must be a priority to protect women’s fundamental rights, including challenging online platforms and apps hosting DFSA content which actively exploit regulatory loopholes?