British Board of Film Classification (Accountability to Parliament and Appeals) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I am most grateful for this opportunity to call for the Second Reading of my Bill. I am also grateful to the large number of colleagues in all parts of the House who have given up their precious constituency day to be here. There is growing concern in this House and in the country about the rising tide of violence. Whatever the complications around counting, reporting and recording, the statistics suggest a rise of about tenfold over the past 25 years in violent crime in general and, more specifically, in rape; and the trend remains upwards. The Bill seeks to address what I believe is one of the fundamental drivers of our increasingly violent society. It has received the endorsement of leaders of several of our religious communities, including the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, the Anglican Bishop of Bristol, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the League of British Muslims. I am very grateful that the Prime Minister has agreed to see the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and me to discuss the issues raised by the Bill. This morning, I shall offer compelling evidence that the growth in violent offences is linked to the growing availability in the media of extremely violent and explicitly sexual material. Part of that material falls within the orbit of the British Board of Film Classification, which is responsible for classifying films on an advisory basis for local authorities, and has statutory powers with regard to videos, DVDs and certain classes of video games. My Bill would reform that organisation. It is manifestly obvious that some very important media lie outside the remit of the BBFC, particularly television and the internet. In a private Member's Bill one can only do so much; my aim is to suggest ways of setting boundaries that we could then extend to other areas. I hope that the House will bear with me if I spend the bulk of my speech focusing on the need for reform, and then briefly outline the provisions. I shall start with a group of videos banned by the Director of Public Prosecutions a generation ago. They were re-examined by the BBFC three years ago, and one of those that it decided to release into ordinary high-street outlets such as HMV was ““SS Experiment Camp””. Let me quote from the sleeve of this video:"““Female political prisoners are brought to Von Kleiben's secret camp to have sex with Wehrmacht troops as part of a breeding study—at least the compliant, beautiful ones, that is. The plain Janes and the uncooperative experience a course of cruel experiments by Von Kleiben's lesbian assistant.””" The film shows in voyeuristic detail women being tortured to death by SS camp guards. A BBFC spokesman commented on the film:"““It is tasteless—but then I find most Mel Gibson films tasteless…It is not going to create an attitude towards Jewish women that is harmful.””" It is certainly true that far more brutal films have since been released, but I urge those in the House who feel—and I know there are some—that although material may be tasteless, adults should be allowed to watch whatever they like in a free country, to read the report published by the Ministry of Justice last September. Its title is interesting in itself: ““The evidence of harm to adults””—it focused exclusively on adults—““relating to exposure to extreme pornographic material: a rapid evidence assessment.”” The survey was based on 124 independent studies from around the world. I shall quote some of the findings. It says that"““the research reviewed in this report provides evidence of the negative psychological, attitudinal and behavioural effects on adults who access this material.””" The material, incidentally, was hardcore, but not necessarily violent pornography. The report continues:"““These include (for men): physiological arousal…leading to beliefs that women enjoy or desire rape…; attitudinal effects; rape myth acceptance; pro-rape attitudes; self-reported likelihood to use force or to rape; behavioural effects such as: aggression in the laboratory after exposure; using pornographic materials to prepare for sexual offences…; actual real life rape and sexual aggression””." There will always be those who claim that there can be a correlation without a cause—that this whole phenomenon can be explained away by saying that those who are prone to rape have a greater predisposition to view pornographic material. As someone who worked for a number of years as a statistician, I can tell the House that it is possible to pursue that sort of chicken and egg argument until the cows come home. We do not accept it, and never have accepted it, in areas such as simulated child pornography, where child porn is made with actresses who are actually adults but appear to be children. We do not accept it in the case of racist literature. Interestingly, the Ministry of Justice report addresses this point head on, and comments:"““Research testing theoretical models has identified a mutually–reinforcing relationship between extreme pornography as a causal factor in instigating sexual aggression, and a predisposition to sexual aggression creating an interest in extreme pornographic material.””" There we have the chicken and the egg. I shall give one or two further examples. In Leicester in 2004, Warren Leblanc admitted murdering his 14-year-old friend Stefan Pakeerah in a murderous assault with a claw hammer and knife. I know that the right hon. Member for Leicester, East will be dwelling on that case, so I will not do so, but the testimony of the father is well worth listening to. An even more horrific case was that of the two 10-year-old schoolboys who were convicted of murdering toddler Jamie Bulger. When the noble Lord Alton was an MP, he commented on the remarks of the trial judge, Justice Morland. Lord Alton said:"““The context of my amendment two years ago was the killing of young boy, James Bulger, in the city of Liverpool…In the aftermath of the verdicts, the trial judge remarked on, 'the striking similarities' between scenes in the video ““Child's Play 3”” and the attack on James Bulger.””" He went on to point out that"““440 other videos had been hired during the previous few years by the father of one of the boys. The videos included soft pornography, violent horror and necrophilia.””—[Official Report, 3 April 1996; Vol. 275, c. 309.]" Last year the BBFC at least sought to ban the successor to the game ““Manhunt 2””. Its director, David Cook, said:"““Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.””" Indeed, I understand that under the points system in the game, the more sadistic the killing, the higher the number of points a player gets. The BBFC's video appeals committee overturned this ban, but found its own ruling overturned in the High Court. Although this process has finally yielded the right result in that case, the House will not be surprised to hear that one of the provisions of my Bill is to reform the video appeals committee.