Pornography depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives set to be banned

Peers agreed by a majority of one to ban videos and images depicting relationships that would not be allowed in real life.

They also agreed by 142 votes to 140, majority two, to bring intimate pictures and videos of adults pretending to be children in line with similar images of real children.

Baroness Bertin, who led a review into pornography regulation published last year, warned that “around half of all sexual abuse cases against children were perpetrated by step-parents” in her call for the law change.

But justice minister Baroness Levitt warned that cracking down on pornography depicting sex between step-relatives was complicated, because not all relationships between step-relatives are illegal.

Debating the Crime and Policing Bill on Monday, peers have also agreed to a Government-backed ban on screenshotting intimate images without the subject’s consent.

And courts will have a duty to tell criminals they must delete intimate images they have shared or threatened to share without the subject’s consent.

The Government successfully wrote into the Bill a ban on possessing or publishing pornographic images of sex between relatives.

Lady Bertin said she was “mystified why it does not include step-incest”, as she moved her proposal, which peers backed 144 votes to 143.

She added: “Nearly all step-relations between step-parents and step-siblings is illegal.

“This is because Parliament recognised the clear power imbalance in step family relationships within households, and also Parliament acted because step-relations are the most likely relationships in which child sexual abuse takes place.

“In fact, in the UK, around half of all sexual abuse cases against children are perpetrated by step parents, yet the depiction of this type of pornography allows porn companies to profit from content that depicts something which is utterly illegal in the UK.”

The Conservative peer also warned pornography existed “with settings in children’s bedrooms, with actors in children’s clothes, braces, toys, pigtails and other markers of childhood”, with some videos tagged “‘little’, ‘tiny’, ‘age gap'”.

She said this type of content “normalises the sexualisation of children, promotes the idea that children consent, and fuels demand for real child abuse material”.

Lady Levitt said she understood Lady Bertin’s ambitions but warned a broader ban on step-relative pornography could “criminalise sexual relationships that are lawful between adults in real life”.

She added the ban would “significantly increase the complexity of the offence”, if police and the courts needed to assess factors such as whether the step-relatives depicted live or have lived together, or whether one had a caring role for the other.

Turning to a ban on content depicting child-like characters, Lady Levitt said she feared the amendment risked “limiting successful law enforcement operations under the existing legislation”.

This is because police try to identify and locate children who appear in indecent images, she said.

Expanding the scope of existing legislation “to include adults who can and have consented to make pornography risks diverting resources for the police to try and distinguish children from adults who are pretending to be children”, the minister added.

Conservative peer Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge proposed the duty on courts to make deprivation and deletion orders, if a criminal is convicted of an offence involving sharing an indecent image, which peers backed by 202 votes to 155, majority 47.

She pointed to an Observer newspaper analysis of 98 “revenge porn” cases concluded in English and Welsh magistrates’ courts across six months in 2024 and 2025.

It found three cases resulted in a deprivation order.

“It is quite simply appalling,” Lady Owen said.

“Survivors of this abuse deserve better.”

Lady Owen also proposed a new “hashing” rule, to effectively set up in law a register of the “digital fingerprints” attached to intimate images shared without consent, which peers backed 192 votes to 155, majority 37.

Voluntary registers already exist, and firms such as social media companies can check the hashes of images they host, matching them with the images shared without consent to stop further distribution.

Lady Owen said existing hash matching proposals were “not comprehensive enough to fully protect victims and risk victims once again being left to chase their abuse across the internet”.

She added: “In some instances, women have achieved successful prosecution, their perpetrators given prison sentences, yet appallingly, these images still remain online.

“To highlight just how serious this really is, those impacted often describe the trauma and helplessness as driving them to the brink of suicide.

“We cannot rely on the goodwill of internet services to tackle this or for the government to undertake yet another review – we must finally offer comprehensive protections to those whose intimate images have been shared without their consent to allow them to reclaim their lives and stop them living in fear.”

Justice minister Baroness Levitt said changes to hash-matching laws “could have the adverse effect of restricting the flexibility” of the work of watchdog Ofcom.

On screenshotting, Lady Levitt said: “Intimate images are personal and they are private.

“Consenting adults are, of course, free to share them and may do so in ways that are permanent or temporary, but a person’s right to share their image temporarily in private must be respected and if there is violation of that right, then it must be addressed.”

The minister said the Government’s proposal would “make it a criminal offence non-consensually to take a screenshot of or copy in any way an intimate image that the victim has shared only temporarily”.

The Bill faces further scrutiny in the Lords, and both Houses must agree the final draft before it can become law.a