House of Lords votes to end Wild West of online pornography

The House of Lords has agreed to ban online pornography normalising violence and child sex abuse.

Under a set of amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill approved by Peers, pornographic content depicting incest, torture or over-18s as pre-pubescent children would be banned online.

Currently, such content is illegal to purchase on the high street, but Baroness Bertin previously pointed out to members of the upper house that it is to be found “everywhere” online. Campaigners are urging the Government to ensure the measures become law.

‘Pervasive’

Introducing her amendments last year, Lady Bertin — who led a Government-commissioned review into online pornography — explained: “The central mission of this group of amendments is to close the gap between the law governing offline and online pornography and to bring long overdue scrutiny to an industry that has operated with impunity for far too long.”

“The review I led for the Government showed me corners of this world that you simply cannot unsee. Online pornography is now so extreme and pervasive that it does not just reflect sexual tastes; it shapes them. It normalises violence, distorts intimacy, grooms men and boys to perpetrate sexual violence and has driven child sexual abuse as well as child-on-child sexual abuse.”

She emphasised: “To be clear, this is not niche content on the dark web. As a team, we looked for further evidence of this kind of content. It was everywhere, including on the home pages of mainstream sites, searchable in seconds”.

Illegal

The Government also plans to ban dedicated ‘nudification’ tools under the Crime and Policing Bill.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall stated: “We will not stand by while technology is weaponised to abuse, humiliate and exploit them through the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes.”

In January, the Westminster Government announced that it would criminalise the creation of explicit deepfake images of people without their consent.

Under the Online Safety Act 2023, seeking to share non-consensual intimate images was already illegal but the implementation of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 will criminalise the creation of such content.