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

Who knows what the Prime Minister's view will be? It does not appear that the Select Committee should scrutinise appointments to the BBFC. Another concern that I have is that my hon. Friend's Bill mentions the appointment of the ““principal officers”” of the BBFC being subject to scrutiny. It is proposed that a public body's appointments subject to examination by a Select Committee will be restricted to its chairman. I am not clear about who the principal officers are and how wide that description is. The BBFC has a number of senior staff, and it would be somewhat impractical for the appointment of more than the chairman to be subject to scrutiny by the Select Committee. Perhaps my hon. Friend can address that point. My next concern, which I referred to in an intervention on my hon. Friend, is about the nature of the appeals process. He set great store by the need for accountability to Parliament and the possibility of an appeal. Almost no regulator has an appeal process. If Ofcom or Ofgem reaches a decision, it remains its decision. The BBFC acts as a regulator, and I am not convinced that a general appeals process such as my hon. Friend describes is a good idea. It would also raise potential difficulties for the industry. I accept that we should not worry just about what the industry wants, but it is an important industry. At present, a film maker or distributor has lengthy discussions with the BBFC about what it will and will not accept and what cuts might be needed to achieve a certain classification. As I have said, classifications matter greatly to a film's potential revenue. It seems to be double jeopardy for that process to be undergone, an agreement reached and a film put on general release with the cuts that the BBFC has asked for, and then for the whole process to be overturned because 50 MPs sign an early-day motion saying that it should be. There is an existing internal appeals body, the Video Appeals Committee, to which my hon. Friend referred, although it is the industry that can appeal to it. He suggested that it was somehow there to do the industry's bidding—I think that he said it was quasi-independent. I would say only that its president is a former director of the Serious Fraud Office, and its membership includes people such as Biddy Baxter, whom I fondly remember as the producer of ““Blue Peter””—my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) will remember her even better than I—Claire Rayner, Fay Weldon, former head teachers and directors of social services and area child protection committees. It is not an industry-led body. I was pretty horrified when it overturned the BBFC decision on ““Manhunt 2””, and I am pleased that its decision has been challenged, but I would not like it to be thought that the VAC is just a patsy for the industry, which will accept whatever argument is made to it.