ACCORDING to The Guardian, while discussions around a British firewall have captured headlines, there are no current plans on the statute books to ban VPNs for everyone, with ministers and regulators recognising VPNs as lawful tools with legitimate uses.
The article notes that the government’s focus is really on online safety and how VPNs might undermine the Online Safety Act’s age‑assurance and filtering regime, with the latest move being an online‑safety consultation that mentions age‑restricting VPN use rather than an outright nationwide ban.
It outlines several “making it harder” options, such as pressuring app stores to hide or age‑gate VPN apps, building commercial provider lists to block VPN exit IPs, targeted site‑level blocking, and age‑based device or network controls to curb minor access. The piece also argues that a watertight ban is essentially impossible because VPNs are designed to look like ordinary traffic, millions rely on them for work and services like the NHS, and any enforcement would be easy to bypass by users with technical skills.
It concludes that a genuine, technical prohibition would risk serious collateral damage to the UK’s digital economy, and that the Great Firewall of Great Britain is not on the horizon.