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

As always, I defer to my right hon. Friend. The Government might say that this is not about censorship but about classification. That is arguing about angels dancing on the head of a pin. What is classification if it is not censorship? What is censorship if it is not classification? By classifying something, we place it in a band. By censoring something, we place it in a band. When a constituent comes to me and says that they are disgusted and horrified by something that they or their children have accessed, or, even more frighteningly, when we hear at school governing body meetings that children are referring to some of those productions, it leads me to think about what possible sanction we have in this country. At present, we have the sanction of good intentions, the establishment and the great and the good. We have the sanction of the involvement at the heart of the system of people of great nobility, such as Biddy Baxter. We need something a little more concrete. We need more of a link between the body and Parliament. The hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford referred to ““Casino Royale””. Another film is ““Battle Royale””. It is horrifyingly popular among teenage children. It is a Japanese film, in which a large number of schoolchildren are placed on an island and all have a bomb tied to their bodies that can be detonated by remote control. Everyone then has to kill everyone else until only one person is left standing. That is revolting, and the first I heard of it was when I talked to teachers about kids playing ““Battle Royale”” in a school playground in west London last year. That is a direct link between the foul, fevered, foetid imaginings of some Japanese film producer and the silver nobility of a west London primary school.