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

The hon. Gentleman is right on both points. We in the House cannot control the internet, but that is no excuse for not taking the first step in controlling video games. I will come on to his multiple children later, when I discuss the effect of these issues on our children and the fact that parents need to be responsible. I shall cite a number of cases as examples. Let us be clear: we are not against the industry and we are not against having it based in London, contributing to our economy, but it has to show responsibility. We come to the table to help it. The hon. Member for Canterbury is right to praise the Prime Minister for readily agreeing to see us in March and for setting up the Byron review. Indeed, successive Prime Ministers have been running ahead of their Governments, because in the meetings that we have had with them—we have also raised the issue at Prime Minister's questions—they have been very concerned. However, I have to tell the House that Ministers, although courteous in their dealings with MPs, have not, I fear, understood the genuine concern among members of the public about how the issue has operated. I say to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and to the successor to the Department of Trade and Industry, which the Minister represented at my last meeting with her, that they have to understand that there is real concern about the level of violence in video games. Therefore, the issue is not just about defending the industry and London's position; it goes far beyond that. The hon. Member for Canterbury mentioned the Pakeerah case. As the House knows, my concerns about these issues arise from the brutal killing of Stefan Pakeerah, a 14-year-old Leicester schoolboy who was murdered in a savage attack in which he received 50 blows with a claw hammer—an attack that mirrored exactly a scene in the video game ““Manhunt””. I was not the first to say that; Giselle Pakeerah, his parent, has from the very beginning maintained and strongly believed that the fact that Warren Leblanc had a copy of ““Manhunt”” and that other children were looking at those scenes of violence led to the attack on Stefan. The hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) talked about parents. Giselle Pakeerah led a parents' campaign, because she wanted to ensure that such a thing never happened again. She was firm in pushing me and other Members representing Leicester to ensure that the issue was raised. That led to our first meeting with the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, which was most productive. He understood, perhaps because he is the parent of a young child, that something had to be done. At the meeting, we showed Mr. Blair a video game and, in particular, the casing around the video. We noted the fact that the 18 certificate on that casing—I am looking for a penny, but unfortunately I do not have one on me—was about the size of a 5p coin. The then Prime Minister was concerned that video game packaging was such that the need to ensure that under-18s did not have access to such games was not brought to the attention of parents, retailers and others. Since then, the 18 certificate has been increased in size to about that of a 50p coin, but it is nothing like what is on a cigarette packet. Therefore, even if children do not buy such games from retailers—I will refer to those briefly in a moment—they can visit the homes of adults, pick up a game, take it home and go upstairs to play it on the computer without their parents being aware of the fact that it contains a lot of violence. That is why I produced my Bill to amend the Video Recordings Act 1984. Although it did not get succeed, it drew our concerns to the House's attention. The university of Missouri, Columbia, has already produced what I regard as a definitive report—I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it—suggesting that there is a link between the violence in computer games and the violence of individuals. We have no equivalent research here. One thing that I hope the Minister will initiate, which I have urged on her many times, is the production of good research on the subject. As the hon. Member for Canterbury mentioned, when we raise the need for proper rather than voluntary regulation, the industry always says, ““Well, video games are quite similar to films. How is a video game different from a film?”” That is quite simple: video games are different because they are interactive. People who are watching a film at the cinema cannot participate in what is happening on the screen, or if they do they are removed from the cinema. However, someone sitting at a computer playing a video game, or someone with one of those small devices that young people have these days, the name of which I forget— [Interruption.] PlayStations or PSPs, something of that kind. [Interruption.] Well, whatever they are called, when people play these things, they can interact. They can shoot people; they can kill people. As the hon. Gentleman said, they can rape women. That is what is so wrong about the present situation. Dr. Tanya Byron's report will come out soon. The hon. Member for Canterbury and I are due to meet the Prime Minister around that time, on 18 or 19 March, and the Bill will give the House an opportunity to discuss matters further. I have two final points to make. The first concerns the role of retailers. People under the age of 18 can buy the kind of video games that we are debating from some of our biggest retailers, such as Tesco and Asda. Such retailers are not doing what they have to do to prevent the sale of those video games to people under the age of 18. No less a figure than the iconic Trevor McDonald, on his programme, sent mystery shoppers under 18 to seek to buy such video games from retailers. They were successful. I have asked Ministers many times how many retailers have been prosecuted for selling video games unlawfully to those under 18. We never seem to get the figures, but I hope that we will get them today to aid the hon. Member for Canterbury in what he is doing.