Crime and Policing Bill

Jess Asato Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill before us today. It contains a multitude of crucial measures to tackle issues from non-consensual intimate images to retail worker assault, child criminal exploitation and knife crime. I thank the Ministers for Policing and Crime, for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls and for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, their teams and the whole Government for their work on the Bill. I particularly express my gratitude to the Government for accepting the principle of amendments to the Bill that I first tabled last year, which have been ably taken up more recently by Baroness Bertin in the other place.

Government amendments to Lords amendments 263, 264 and 265 rightly accept that online pornography is a key driver of violence against women and girls, child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation. We know that online pornography is driven by a profit-maximising algorithm that encourages addiction. Like any other addiction, it can spiral. Addicts find themselves having to move towards increasingly extreme content, including illegal content, to get the same fix, or they find that offline, in real-world actions, and we know the impact that that has.

Pornography is not just entertainment; it has become a form of education. It trains brains to link endorphin and dopamine production to violent, degrading and, in some cases, paedophilic-adjacent content. It promotes the idea that pain for women is pleasure for men. It instils the notion that to be close to a woman is to dominate or degrade her. From Wayne Couzens to Dominique Pelicot, we know how the consumption of online sexualised violence can turn into offline violence.

I therefore welcome clauses 105 and 106. They build on my proposed new clause 102, tabled on Report, and will criminalise the possession or publication of strangulation or suffocation in pornography. This is vital given that 36% of women under the age of 34 have been strangled during sex, and strangulation is now the second most common cause of stroke in young women.

I also welcome the Government amendments in lieu before us that build on mine and Baroness Bertin’s amendments to ban pornographic content that features step-incest or performers role-playing as children. Content such as that, which sexualises children, with very young-looking performers dressed in school uniforms, holding lollipops and stuffed toys, very clearly promotes a sexual interest in children. Two pieces of research from 2024 found that between 43% and 63% of those who have committed offences relating to child sexual abuse material began by habitually watching so-called “barely legal” content.

It is right that through the Government’s amendment in lieu to Lords amendment 265, this gateway to paedophilia is swung firmly shut. We know that CSAM consumption and the further child sexual abuse that it can so often encourage largely originate from exposure to online content that is happened across incidentally, rather than with purpose. Offences for online child sexual abuse increased by 26% in 2024.

Content that depicts step-incest—for example, with a stepfather and stepdaughter—likewise eroticises and encourages the sexual abuse of children and those for whom we have or should have a caring responsibility. Sadly, half of all sexual abuse cases against children are perpetrated by a step-parent or family member. Given that we are increasingly living in an age of blended families, permitting the depiction of this abuse is particularly pernicious.

Pornography also has an impact on those who appear in it, and we know that women are all too often coerced or trafficked into the industry. I therefore welcome the Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 264, which builds on my amendment and that of Baroness Gabby Bertin to grant the Government the power to require pornography sites to proactively verify the age and consent of those featured on it, rather than just waiting for content to be reported.

The amendment will crucially grant powers to allow performers to withdraw their consent retroactively so that they are not forever trapped into a life in the pornography industry by pictures and videos from perhaps even decades prior. It is of the utmost importance that the Government stick to their timetable to deliver that and work at pace across Departments and with experts from the sector to deliver on it. I am incredibly grateful to UK Feminista, Barnardo’s, CEASE and the APPG on commercial sexual exploitation for their tireless work on these issues and to Ministers who have worked constructively with me and many Members across this House to ensure that we get these vital changes in the Bill.

I am also grateful to the Government for engaging similarly constructively with me on my amendment to Lords amendment 300, which relates to the proposed statutory definition of so-called honour-based abuse. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), I was honoured last year to host a screening of the powerful Channel 4 documentary “The Push”, alongside the mother of Fawziyah Javed, who was failed through a series of missed opportunities by statutory bodies to identify her as a victim of honour-based abuse. She was pushed off Arthur’s Seat by her husband, killing her and her unborn child. That is why it is very welcome that this Bill introduces a definition of honour-based abuse. It represents an important step forward and a great win for all the victims and organisations who have campaigned for this for many years.

Nevertheless, I and organisations that work in this space, such as Karma Nirvana, are concerned that the definition as it stands falls short of fully capturing honour-based abuse. The Lords amendment references only a “person”, whereas we know that honour- based abuse is often perpetrated by multiple people as part of a family or community—a feature that distinguishes it from other forms of domestic abuse. I have therefore proposed the addition of “or persons” to Lords amendment 300 in order to reflect that. It is a tiny change, and an amendment sought by Baroness Sugg in the other place. I recognise some may argue that it is already covered by the Interpretation Act, but having spent many years in the domestic abuse sector I know that overstretched and under-resourced multi-agency professionals, particularly the police, may interpret legislation literally and act only within the explicit wording to be set out in Lords amendment 300.

Some have also argued that the use of “persons” would be contrary to the usage and interpretations in other criminal law contexts, yet there are many examples of offences that relate to things such as organised crime, gangs and riot that reference “persons”, including in the Serious Crime Act 2015 and the legislation before us.

A definition of honour-based abuse is the culmination of years of campaigning. I remember working with many people who are still in this House on getting it included in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which sadly it was not. I invite the Minister to clarify, in her speech, that the Government intend the amendment to cover multiple perpetrators as well as a sole perpetrator. I would appreciate her and her colleagues’ continued commitment to working with organisations such as Karma Nirvana to ensure that the statutory guidance accurately reflects the true nature of honour-based abuse. Also, there must be funding for training for multi-agency professionals, which will undoubtedly be required if the definition stays as it is.