The UK government’s new ban on porn showing forms of “strangulation” will take effect this autumn, according to the Ministry of Justice, which just confirmed the timing in the British press.
“We are progressing work to bring these offenses into force this autumn, balancing speed with operational considerations and wider system impacts,” Lord Gerard Lemos, with the Ministry of Justice, said this week. Parliament passed the Crime and Policing Bill which references the ban, making publishing or possessing porn that shows “strangulation or suffocation” a crime.
XBIZ reports that the ban will be considered a “priority offense” under the Online Safety Act (OSA), the UK law implementing internet guidelines which all online platforms must actively adhere to. According to the law, possessing these materials risks up to two years in prison while publication of such content can bring up to five.
The measure also bans incest in porn, or rather depictions of it, in role-play/storylines. As Wet Ink has covered, this genre (“stepbro porn“) is one of the most popular categories on adult sites like PornHub, so how it will affect what’s available to watch in the UK remains to be seen. The law also targets adults playing children, specifying the age cut off for such portrayals under 16. No start date has been reported for this part of the law.
The Ministry of Justice’s use of the word “autumn” as the start date has left some confused about when to expect the crackdown to begin, but as XBIZ notes, the season is here and by definition it could start any time before December 21. Ofcom, the UK regulator, is still waiting for government guidance on how to enforce it according to reports.
“There is no such thing as safe strangulation,” said Deniz Ugur, deputy director of End Violence Against Women Coalition told LBC/PA, about the depictions, both of which became subject of scrutiny after Bertin led a government-backed review of adult content published in February 2025.
The review recommended banning content it called “degrading, violent and misogynistic,” with choking and incest role-play two of its main targets. Bertin now wants a regulator to oversee legal porn, too, suggesting the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the body that rates films in the UK, take over the job. This adds to a busy year for UK porn rules. Ofcom has been fining sites under the Online Safety Act’s age-check rules and earlier this year, one filmmaker had to dub the word “Mommy” out of her own film to stay within the incoming guidelines.
