From 6 November it is a crime in England and Wales to possess or publish pornography showing strangulation or suffocation. The definitions are broad, and Britain has been here before.
Since 6 November 2026, England and Wales have a set of new criminal offences. Among them, it is now illegal to possess or publish pornographic images that explicitly and realistically depict strangulation or suffocation. The government’s guidance was blunt about what people need to do: anything already held had to be deleted before 6 November, because possession counts as a continuing act.
The maximum penalty for possession is two years in prison. For publication, it is five.
Why now
The offences come from the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April. The background, according to the government’s factsheet, is the Independent Pornography Review led by Baroness Bertin, published on 27 February 2025, which concluded that pornography depicting strangulation is widespread online and plays a role in shaping real-life sexual behaviour.
The new offences sit alongside duties under the Online Safety Act. Ofcom can fine services that fail to meet their obligations up to £18 million or 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is higher. And the government has set itself a goal it describes as parity: what is illegal offline should be illegal online.
What “suffocation” covers
The interesting part is the definition. Strangulation is relatively clear: pressure on the neck. Suffocation is wider. The official guidance says it will generally mean depriving a person of air in a way that affects their ability to breathe, and could, for example, involve covering someone’s mouth and nose or compressing their chest.
The lawyer Neil Brown of decoded.legal had already flagged this in April, writing that “suffocation” makes the offence wider than strangulation and covers what might be termed “breath play”, including covering someone’s nose and mouth. Where exactly the line falls in individual cases is a question for prosecutors and courts, not for commentators.
Britain has written a list before
This is not the first time British regulators have drawn up a list of acts that cannot be shown. In December 2014, new rules required UK video-on-demand pornography to follow the same restrictions as the R18 standard for physical DVDs. Reporting at the time, Bustle listed what the rules covered, including spanking, caning, aggressive whipping, physical or verbal abuse, female ejaculation, strangulation, facesitting and fisting, with the last three described as “life-endangering”.
The criticism then was that the list seemed heavily and unreasonably biased against women, because acts such as female ejaculation and facesitting were singled out. Whatever one thinks of that debate, it showed how hard it is to write a list of banned acts that does not catch more than intended.
The question the law asks platforms
The 2026 Act also does something less noticed. It places a duty on ministers to report to Parliament, within 12 months of Royal Assent, on the role of internet platforms in verifying the age and consent of the people who appear in pornographic content. In other words, by the end of April 2027 the government must explain how platforms should prove that everyone in the frame is an adult who agreed to be there.
That question already has a working answer in one corner of the market. On subscription platforms, each performer who appears in content verifies her identity, and when two women film together, both have to be verified. On OnlyFans, a whole community of lesbian creators works that way, from couples who share a page to solo creators who collaborate, building audiences around shared identity rather than scenes staged for someone else. A list like that shows who is publishing. It does not, and cannot, decide what the new offences cover.
The list and the people
Britain’s new offences are aimed at a specific kind of violent imagery, and the government has said why. The broader lesson of 2014 still applies: lists are blunt tools, and definitions matter.
The more durable answer may be the one Parliament has asked for next. Not just what may be shown, but proof of who chose to be in it.