“Barely legal” pornography and explicit content depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives are set to be banned following a vote in the House of Lords.

Peers backed proposals to ban videos and images portraying relationships on websites like Pornhub that would be illegal in real life, including sex between certain family members, by a majority of just one.

They also agreed, by 142 votes to 140, to bring pornographic images of adults pretending to be children in line with the law covering indecent images of real children.

The changes, that come months after the introduction of the Online Safety Act, were tabled during scrutiny of the Crime and Policing Bill and form part of a wider effort to clamp down on intimate image abuse.

The Online Safety Act brought in age verification.

(Yui Mok – PA Images via Getty Images)

Ministers also secured backing for a new criminal offence covering the non-consensual screenshotting of intimate images, alongside a duty on courts to order offenders to delete images they have shared or threatened to share.

The bill will undergo further scrutiny in the Lords before returning to the Commons, with both Houses of Parliament required to agree on the final wording before it can become law.

Which types of porn are being banned?

Peers have backed a series of amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that would expand the categories of pornographic material outlawed in the UK.

The proposed changes would ban so-called “barely legal” pornography and explicit content depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives in circumstances that would be unlawful in real life.

The government had already written into the bill a ban on possessing or publishing pornographic images of sex between close blood relatives.

However, Conservative peer Baroness Bertin successfully argued for the inclusion of “step-incest” material, warning that “around half of all sexual abuse cases against children were perpetrated by step-parents”.

She told the Lords that nearly all sexual relationships between step-parents and step-children are illegal because of the recognised power imbalance within households, adding that pornography depicting such scenarios allows companies to profit from content showing acts that would be criminal offline.

The government has proposed making it a criminal offence to take a screenshot or copy an intimate image that was shared temporarily and privately, without consent.

(Delmaine Donson via Getty Images)

Peers also voted to bring intimate images and videos of adults pretending to be children into line with existing laws covering indecent images of real children.

Bertin предупреждал, что порнография существует “с обстановкой в детских спальнях, с актерами в детской одежде, с брелоками, игрушками, косичками и другими признаками детства”, причем некоторые видео были помечены словами “‘маленький’, ‘маленький’, ‘разница в возрасте'”.

Она заявила, что этот тип контента “нормализует сексуализацию детей, продвигает идею о том, что дети дают согласие, и подпитывает спрос на реальные материалы сексуального насилия над детьми”.

Кроме того, правительство предложило сделать незаконным получение скриншота или копирование интимного изображения, которое было обменено временно и в частной переписке, без согласия.

Министр юстиции баронесса Левитт сказала в ходе дебатов: “Согласные взрослые, конечно, имеют право делиться ими и могут делать это как в постоянной, так и в временной форме, но право человека делиться своим изображением временно в частной переписке должно быть уважаемым, и если это право нарушается, то это необходимо устранить”.

Министр заявила, что предложение правительства “сделает незаконным недобросовестное получение скриншота или любое копирование интимного изображения, которое жертва поделилась только временно”.