Ten terrible arguments against safeguards on pornography websites

On Monday 2 March 2026, the House of Lords voted to add an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that will require all pornography websites accessed from the UK to verify the age and ongoing consent of everyone featured in pornographic content on their platform.

This vital amendment, if it remains in the Bill, will mean pornography websites have to take active steps to check they are not distributing pornography of a person against their will – or profiting from child abuse and sexual violence.

It is a safeguard for which UK Feminista has campaigned for many years, including via our work as Secretariat of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, which recommended the reform in 2023.

You might very reasonably have assumed that these basic safeguards were already in place. But they are not – and, shockingly, MPs and peers are having to fight for them.

It is fairly difficult to argue that websites should be allowed to distribute pornography of people against their will – and not even have to check the individuals featured are adults. Yet we have seen numerous spurious arguments against the introduction of these basic safeguards, which we address below:

1. ‘There isn’t a problem to solve’
2. ‘It is not possible to implement these safeguards’
3. ‘Trafficking and child abuse are already illegal’
4. ‘The Online Safety Act solves the problem’
5. ‘It’s a commercial matter – Government has no role in it’
6. ‘The safeguards are not enforceable’
7. ‘Appearing in a pornography video is equivalent to acting in a mainstream entertainment film – same rules should apply’
8. ‘The Government needs more time’
9. ‘The amendment doesn’t have support in Parliament’
10. ‘This isn’t a political priority’

1) ‘There isn’t a problem to solve’

The scale of exploitation and abuse on pornography websites accessible from the UK is a safeguarding scandal.

Content featuring child abuse, sexual violence and trafficking victims has repeatedly been found on mainstream pornography websites. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) state that pornography websites “routinely feature sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, and trafficking victims. Repeatedly these sites have chosen profits over reasonable prevention and protection measures.” Survivors have also courageously spoken out about how they are powerless to remove pornographic footage of them from websites accessed from the UK – and the immense psychological toll this can take.

2) ‘It is not possible to implement these safeguards’

If a pornography website cannot verify that the individuals featured on their platform are adults and are consenting to the content being published then it should not be operating.

Preventing the distribution of child abuse, violence against women and pornography against a person’s will is not an optional extra. As it happens, technology and initiatives do exist enabling digital platforms to verify the age and permission of individuals featured in their content and enable withdrawal of consent to publication.

3) ‘Trafficking and child abuse are already illegal’

This amendment is a preventative safeguard. Arguing that further laws are not needed to stop trafficking and child abuse on websites because the acts themselves are crimes is an argument against the need for the Online Safety Act – the UK’s flagship online safety legislation. The Online Safety Act was not introduced to create new offences, but to require platforms to adopt systems and processes that prevent illegal content being hosted – and hold them accountable for doing so.

Requiring pornography companies to verify the age and ongoing consent of people on their platform is a system to prevent these platforms hosting content that involves sexual violence and child sexual exploitation. It is a preventative measure that is entirely consistent with the Online Safety Act.

4) ‘The Online Safety Act solves the problem’

It doesn’t. There is no express requirement in the Online Safety Act for pornography websites to verify, prior to publication, that everyone featured in pornography on their platform is an adult and gave permission for the content to be published on that platform. Nor does it contain any right or mechanism for individuals featured in content on pornography websites to withdraw their consent and have the content removed – enabling websites to continue publishing pornography of people against their will.

5) ‘It’s a commercial matter – Government has no role in it’

Distributing pornography of a person against their will can cause enormous psychological and social harms to them. Publishing and profiting from pornography of a person against their will is sexual exploitation and abuse – and it is the responsibility of Government to protect people against this. It is also entirely within their power to do this.

Survivors have bravely spoken out about exploitation and violence in the pornography industry, with investigations by the Independent Pornography Review and the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation highlighting the multiple serious harms experienced by women before, during and after their involvement in the pornography trade. The fact that at one point in time a woman signed a contract with a pornographer does not lessen any of those harms; in fact, it can compound them. As Survivor Leader Alia Azariah has shared:

“I had never signed a legal document before. I did not understand the language. And I did not understand that a signature could be used to override my safety. I trusted the people in front of me because they were promising safety, and I had no other source of it. The reality of what I had signed became clear very quickly. At my first shoot, I knew I was unsafe and tried to leave. I had been told that was possible, that it was even encouraged, but what I was met with was the contract, not concern. Not care. It was the contract that was used to keep me there.”

Governments have a simple choice: prioritise the rights of pornography websites to make money – or the right of every person not to have pornography of them published against their will.

6) ‘The safeguards are not enforceable’

The amendment passed by the House of Lords has strong enforcement mechanisms built in, which are entirely consistent with existing Online Safety Act enforcement procedures.

The enforcement mechanisms include the ability of the regulator to fine pornography websites who violate this law up to £18 million or 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue (whichever is greater). If a pornography website ultimately fails to comply, the regulator can block access to the site altogether.

7) ‘Appearing in a pornography video is equivalent to acting in a mainstream entertainment film – same rules should apply’

Appearing in a video on a pornography website performing sex acts is fundamentally different to acting in a mainstream entertainment film – in practically every possible way: physically, psychologically and socially. It is therefore ludicrous to suggest that industries dedicated to creating and profiting from these fundamentally different types of activity should be regulated in the same way.

Survivors have repeatedly spoken out about the endemic sexual violence and abuse in the pornography trade, with the UK Parliament’s APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation concluding that “sexual coercion is inherent to the commercial production of pornography”.

Regardless of the conditions or context in which it was produced, the presence of a recording of a person performing sex acts on a pornography website can have profound, wide-ranging and ongoing implications for a person. To help prevent serious harms to that person, they must have the right to withdraw their consent to the recording remaining on the pornography website – and have that right upheld.

8) ‘The Government needs more time’

The need for age and ongoing consent verification on pornography websites is urgent, and the safeguards are not new proposals. An amendment requiring pornography websites to verify the age and ongoing consent of everyone featured on their platform was first tabled as an amendment to the Online Safety Bill in 2022 by Dame Diana Johnson MP. When the Crime and Policing Bill was introduced in 2025, Jess Asato MP tabled an amendment requiring age and ongoing consent verification at the earliest stage. An amendment on this was subsequently tabled in the House of Lords by Baroness Bertin – again at the earliest stage. Government has had ample opportunity to consider these basic safeguarding measures.

9) ‘The amendment doesn’t have support in Parliament’

On the contrary, Parliament has voted to adopt the amendment. The amendment was first tabled in the House of Commons by Jess Asato MP and co-signed by 60 MPs cross-party. It was then tabled by Baroness Bertin in the House of Lords, which voted to add the amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill. When this amendment has been pushed to a vote, it won.

10) ‘This isn’t a political priority’

Requiring age and ongoing consent verification on pornography websites is a basic and indispensable safeguard to prevent the proliferation of imagery featuring child abuse, sexual violence and exploitation. There is growing public outrage at the appalling scale of sexual violence being exposed through high-profile cases, including Jeffrey Epstein’s abhorrent crimes, as well as increasing understanding of the role that pornography has played in the perpetration of this violence. The amendment passed by the House of Lords should be a political priority for any Government: accepted without hesitation and enforced without delay.

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