UK's new porn ban makes major step forward in crackdown on violence against women

The Crime and Policing Bill 2025 has received Royal Assent, marking a major step forward through the system.

On Friday (29 April), the mammoth piece of legislation officially became the Crime and Policing Act 2026, after King Charles III formally agreed to make the bill into an Act of Parliament, aka a law.

It comes after the bill, which is part of the UK's crackdown on 'harmful' pornography, passed through its parliamentary stages in both Houses.

The new legislation will see the criminalisation of pornography showing strangulation, adults roleplaying as children, or incest. It also cracks down on intimate image abuse with a set of new laws and introduces a new spiking offence.

This means that people publishing or possessing material or depicting these categories and acts could face prison time, with a maximum five-year sentence.

Speaking out on the landmark bill being passed, Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, Alex Davies-Jones has issued a statement to Tyla.

The Crime and Policing Bill has officially become law, bringing in new porn bans (Getty Stock Image)

She said: "Too many young people, especially women, are often having to navigate a matrix of online misogynistic abuse, and still acutely fear assault in public spaces via more perverse means than ever.

"The Crime and Policing Act, which becomes law today, puts real and robust protections for women at the heart of our justice system. Crafted with female safety in mind, it's the most progressive legislation to date, tackling harmful pornography, intimate image abuse, and spiking.

"I hope it shows the importance this Government is placing on reducing VAWG, and gives women and girls a stronger feeling of safety, whether online or on a night out."

Davies-Jones urged: "I'm always proud to see young people using their voices, standing up for what's right, and shaping a better society for the next generation. Readers of Tyla should feel seen and heard today."

What will the Crime and Policing Act do to protect women and girls?

To break it down, the first of the new measures will ban anyone from possessing or publishing harmful pornography that shows incest between family members, and sex between step or foster relations where one person is pretending to be under 18.

A second amendment criminalises the publication and possession of pornography where an adult is roleplaying as a child.

And pornography depicting strangulation or choking is also being made illegal through the bill.

Gov.uk reports that the Independent Porn Review found that choking during sex had been normalised through the consumption of pornography, as well as having created the belief that it is safe to choke a partner during sex because it is non-fatal.

The Act includes various laws aimed at protecting women and girls (Anadolu/Getty Images)

This act supports the government’s Safer Streets Mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade and rebuild public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

Additionally, the Crime and Policing Act also pledges to tackle violence against women and girls by:

• Strengthening the management of offenders in the community and introducing enhanced notification requirements on registered sex offenders, including a bar of them changing their names where there is a risk of sexual harm
• Giving victims of stalking the right to know the identity of the perpetrator
• Introducing a new criminal offence of administering a harmful substance (including spiking)
• Criminalising the making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply of so called ‘nudification tools’
• Strengthening the law around non-consensual intimate image abuse by creating new offences of 'screenshotting' an intimate image without consent, allowing courts to make deletion orders for non-consensual intimate images, and placing new duties on online platforms to ensure such images are taken down within 48 hours

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