LONDON — The House of Lords, the U.K.’s upper house of Parliament, has agreed to amendments to the pending Crime and Policing Bill that would make depicting “choking” in pornography illegal and designate it a “priority offense” under the Online Safety Act.
On Dec. 9, the House of Lords voted to approve Amendments 294 and 295, which would make it a criminal offense to possess or publish “pornographic images of strangulation or suffocation.”
If the Crime and Policing Bill becomes law with those amendments intact, possession of “choking” material could lead to up to two years in prison, while the penalty for publication of such material could include imprisonment for up to five years.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Baroness Alison Levitt, representing the government, told the assembled Lords that for the law to apply, the strangulation or suffocation portrayed must be “explicit and realistic,” but does not have to be real.
“For example, it can be acted or posed,” she explained. “Or the image may be AI-generated — provided that the people in the image look real to a reasonable person.”
Listing choking content as a priority offense, Levitt noted, “will oblige platforms to take the necessary steps to stop this harmful material appearing online.”
The “priority offense” label currently applies to material such as CSAM and terrorism content.
The drive toward a ban on depiction of nonfatal strangulation, or “choking,” gained momentum following the release, in February, of a “pornography review” that recommended banning any adult content deemed “degrading, violent and misogynistic.” On June 19, the U.K. government issued a statement confirming its intent to outlaw content involving strangulation.
Baroness Gabrielle Bertin, a Conservative member of the House of Lords who served as independent lead reviewer on the pornography review, praised the adoption of the amendments.
“This is not just another amendment,” said Bertin. “It is a light-bulb moment, a recognition that what has been normalized for too long is neither safe nor acceptable.”
Meanwhile, the government rejected other proposed amendments that would have criminalized certain types of adult content, including a proposal to prohibit content depicting sex between family members such as stepparents and stepsiblings.
Once the Crime and Policing Bill passes out of the House of Lords, it will return to the House of Commons for consideration of the new amendments.