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LONDON — There’s a particular hush that settles over a chamber when lawmakers realize they’re about to redraw a line that can’t easily be erased. That moment arrived in the House of Lords, where members agreed to amendments to the pending Crime and Policing Bill that would make depicting “choking” in pornography illegal and classify it as a “priority offense” under the Online Safety Act.
On Dec. 9, the Lords voted to approve Amendments 294 and 295, measures that would turn the possession or publication of “pornographic images of strangulation or suffocation” into a criminal offense. The language is blunt. Intentionally so.
If the bill becomes law with those amendments intact, the consequences are no small thing. Possessing “choking” material could carry a prison sentence of up to two years, while publishing it could result in as much as five years behind bars. The stakes, suddenly, feel very real.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Baroness Alison Levitt, speaking for the government, told fellow Lords that the law would hinge on whether the strangulation or suffocation depicted is “explicit and realistic.” It wouldn’t need to be real, she said—just convincing enough.
“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.”
Designating choking content as a priority offense, Levitt added, “will oblige platforms to take the necessary steps to stop this harmful material appearing online.” In regulatory terms, that’s a heavy label—one that triggers active duties, not polite suggestions.
At the moment, the “priority offense” category is reserved for some of the darkest corners of the internet, including CSAM and terrorism-related material. Sliding choking depictions into that same bracket signals how seriously lawmakers want platforms to take this.
The push to ban portrayals of nonfatal strangulation didn’t materialize overnight. It picked up steam after the release of a pornography review in February that recommended prohibiting adult content deemed “degrading, violent and misogynistic.” By June 19, the government made its position unmistakably clear, confirming its intention to outlaw content involving strangulation.
Baroness Gabrielle Bertin, a Conservative peer who served as the independent lead reviewer on that pornography review, welcomed the amendments with unmistakable conviction.
“This is not just another amendment,” Bertin said. “It is a light-bulb moment, a recognition that what has been normalized for too long is neither safe nor acceptable.”
Not every proposed expansion made it through. The government rejected other amendments that would have criminalized additional forms of adult content, including a proposal to
