Porn showing choking or incest to be banned from early November, government says

Online pornography depicting strangulation or incestuous relationships will become illegal to possess or publish in England and Wales from 6 November, the government has announced, marking one of the most significant changes to British pornography law in decades.

From that date, it will be a criminal offence to possess or publish porn that shows strangulation or suffocation, depicts sexual activity between people who are related or pretending to be related, or shows adults roleplaying as children under 16. The offences also capture porn depicting sex between step or foster relations where one person is pretending to be under 18. Publishing the banned material will carry a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment, while possession can bring up to two years — rising to three years for images depicting a person pretending to be under 16.

Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones was blunt about the message to the public. "If you've got this material, delete it. If you're sharing it, stop," she said. "It's not as harmless as you may think, and after 6 November, it is criminal."

The Bertin review and how we got here

The new offences are the direct product of an independent review of pornography regulation led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, which reported in February 2025. Commissioned by Rishi Sunak's government, the review found that depictions of choking were "rife" on popular porn sites and had helped normalise the act among young people — a claim she has since sharpened, saying strangulation in porn had become "totally normalised" and had "gone into the bloodstream" of society.

Her report cited the account of a 14-year-old boy asking a teacher how to choke girls during sex, and warned that people imitating such behaviour "may face devastating consequences". It also lamented what she called a "total absence of government scrutiny" of the pornography industry. In response, Bertin herself laid amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill — which became law in April this year — to ensure the content would be captured as criminal offences in England and Wales. On the commencement of the laws, she said the news came "not a moment too soon".

She told the Press Association the change would "send the unequivocal signal" to companies that host and facilitate porn — and to wider society — that "extreme and violent content that encourages real-life harm is not acceptable".

Close-up of a Lady Justice statue, symbolising the new offences taking effect Credit: DP Singh Bhullar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The evidence that drove the decision

Alongside the review, ministers and campaigners have pointed to research on how widespread strangulation during sex has become. A 2024 study by the Institute for Addressing Strangulation found that more than a third of 16 to 34-year-old adults reported having been strangled or choked at least once during consensual sex. A follow-up survey by the same group found that 43% of sexually active 16 to 17-year-olds said they had been subjected to it.

That data sits behind the government's central claim: that pornography shapes expectations of what sexual relationships look like, particularly for young people. "Porn can shape what people think a healthy relationship looks like, especially young people," Davies-Jones said. "Content that normalises, or even glorifies, violence against women is dangerous and can blur the line with what is acceptable in real life."

It is worth noting what the law does and does not change. Non-fatal strangulation is already a criminal offence when it occurs without consent. What changes on 6 November is that depicting it in pornography becomes a crime in itself — and so does merely possessing such images. According to the government, possession could include keeping an image stored on a phone, computer or in cloud storage, while publication could include uploading, posting or otherwise making the content available to someone online.

What the critics and campaigners say

The End Violence Against Women Coalition, which has campaigned for the change for years, welcomed the announcement while urging the government to ensure the law is actually enforced. Its interim director, Janaya Walker, called it "an important step towards tackling the normalisation of violence against women and girls", adding that strangulation "can cause serious, lasting harm and even death, yet its widespread portrayal in pornography risks normalising this violence in sexual relationships, particularly among young people."

The coalition pressed ministers to go further by updating the Online Safety Act so that online platforms are explicitly required to remove the banned content — a reminder that criminalising possession and publication is only half the battle. Criminal offences are enforced against individuals; transforming "the online pornographic landscape", as the coalition puts it, requires the platforms that host and profit from the material to act.

That caution was echoed by Durham University law professor Clare McGlynn, a longstanding expert on image-based abuse, who welcomed the commencement of the laws as a potential "turning point" — "a line in the sand when we decided that we were no longer going to accept the normalisation of sexually violent content in pornography." But she also raised questions about how swiftly tech platforms and regulators would move to remove violating material, stressing that "while these are criminal offences, this is not about prosecuting individuals, but transforming the online pornographic landscape and that requires the platforms and regulator to act."

The politics of the ban

The move forms part of the government's stated commitment to halve violence against women and girls within a decade — a headline pledge that has shaped a string of recent legislative changes. The same Crime and Policing Bill amendments also included provisions allowing tech executives to be held personally liable, facing imprisonment or fines, if their platforms fail to comply with Ofcom enforcement decisions to remove intimate images shared without consent. An earlier tranche of government action had already banned depictions of strangulation in pornography in a narrower form and outlawed harmful "nudification" apps.

Davies-Jones framed the package as part of that broader mission: "This government has a commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. For many people, it is still easy to access harmful pornography online." She insisted the legislation was not about policing private taste — "this isn't about criminalising harmless sexual preferences" — but about content that "normalises, or even glorifies" violence. "Young people especially deserve better examples of what healthy relationships look like. Real intimacy is built on respect and trust, not abuse."

Cross-party pressure on the issue has been building for years, and the Bertin review itself drew support from across the political divide. That consensus is one reason the commencement date has landed with relatively little controversy in Westminster, even as civil liberties campaigners will be watching closely to see how broadly the offences are interpreted in practice — particularly around the boundaries of possession and the treatment of material that blurs the line between fantasy and depiction.

What happens on 6 November

For the public, the practical effect is straightforward: from 6 November, holding or sharing pornography of the banned types in England and Wales becomes a criminal matter, with serious potential sentences. The government has given advance warning precisely so that people can delete material before the law bites.

For platforms and the regulator, the harder work begins then. Ofcom, which polices online safety duties, and the major pornography platforms will face pressure to demonstrate that the banned content is being identified and removed at scale. Campaigners' warning is clear: a law that sits on the statute book while the material remains freely available will have failed its own test. The next measure of success will not be the number of prosecutions, but whether the volume of violent pornography circulating online actually falls.

*Reporting for this story drew on coverage by MyJoyOnline, NewsBeep, GovWire's government announcement, the Leigh Journal and the Oldham Times. For more on UK regulation, see our Politics and Health sections, our coverage of Ofcom's enforcement work in Ofcom investigates Meta over Instagram safety, research on young people's online lives in the Bradford social media trial on young people's digital lives, 'Don't call us snowflakes' on how young people see themselves, and our World and News desks.*