Member

Let me be crystal-clear: under the Online Safety Act 2023, sharing or threatening to share intimate images without someone’s consent, including images of people in their underwear, is a criminal offence for both individuals and platforms. My predecessor, my right honourable friend the Member for Hove and Portslade, rightly made this a priority offence, meaning that services have to take proactive action to stop this content appearing in the first place. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 made it a criminal offence to create or request the creation of non-consensual intimate images, and today I can announce to the House that this offence will be brought into force this week and that I will make it a priority offence in the Online Safety Act, too. That means that individuals are committing a criminal offence if they create or seek to create such content, including on X, and anyone who does that should expect to face the full extent of the law. But responsibility does not just lie with individuals for their own behaviour; the platforms that host such material must be held accountable, including X.