Crime and Policing Act 2026 provisions start in November
If statutory instruments make your eyes glaze over, that is completely understandable. This one still matters. The text published on legislation.gov.uk does not create a brand new Act of Parliament; it switches on selected parts of the Crime and Policing Act 2026. In plain English, it tells us which bits of that law start to operate, and when. **What this means:** a law can be passed before every section is live. These regulations, made on 15 October 2026, set two important start dates: 6 November 2026 for several criminal law provisions, and 16 November 2026 for the section on abortion pardons and criminal record changes.
The instrument is officially called the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 4) Regulations 2026. It was signed by Alex Davies-Jones, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, using a power already written into the Act. That small phrase, Commencement No. 4, is worth noticing. It tells you this is the fourth set of start-date regulations made under the same law. That staggered approach is common. An Act can be large, and government departments often bring different sections into force at different times so that guidance, court processes and record systems can catch up. If you are trying to read the news carefully, this is a good habit to keep: when a law is announced, always ask when each part actually begins.
According to the explanatory note, the first batch starts on 6 November 2026. These provisions concern offences linked to the possession and publication of specified kinds of pornography, and child abduction, in England and Wales. The regulations list section 104 on pornographic images of strangulation or suffocation, section 106 on pornographic images of sex between relatives, section 107 on pornographic images of sexual activity with a child under 16, and section 137 on child abduction. The drafting around section 104 is especially technical, because the regulations say sections 104(1) to (3) come into force so far as they extend to England and Wales, alongside sections 104(4) and (5). You do not need to memorise every subsection to grasp the key point: on 6 November, these parts stop being words waiting on a page and become active law.
That date matters because commencement is the point at which police, prosecutors and courts can begin working with the provision as part of the live legal framework. It is also a reminder that section titles do a lot of work in public understanding. Even in a dense legal text, the titles tell you what Parliament was trying to address: harmful sexual material and child protection. **A useful reading tip:** always notice where a regulation applies. Here, the explanatory note points readers to England and Wales. That may sound like a dry detail, but it matters because criminal law is not always identical across every part of the UK.
The second date is 16 November 2026, and for many readers it will be the most striking part of the instrument. That is when section 242 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 comes into force. The section covers pardons and the deletion of relevant details in criminal records for women who were convicted, cautioned, arrested or investigated on suspicion of an abortion-related offence where they were acting in relation to their own pregnancy. This stands out because it is not about adding a new offence. It is about what the state does with past prosecutions and records. A pardon carries public recognition, while criminal record changes can affect how long a past investigation or conviction continues to shape a person’s life.
The regulations also say there is no separate impact assessment for this statutory instrument, because impact assessments were already produced for the Crime and Policing Act 2026 itself. In other words, the government is treating this as the start-date mechanism, not the place where the full policy case is made again. The bigger lesson is simple. Legal change often arrives in stages, and dates are part of the story, not decoration. On 6 November 2026, selected criminal law provisions begin. On 16 November 2026, the abortion pardon and criminal record provision follows. If you want to understand what the law is doing, watching those dates is one of the clearest places to start.