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

You will be relieved to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I did not come here today to talk about early-day motions. I came here to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) on securing this slot for what I believe is an important piece of legislation, and to add a few comments of my own. I want to comment on what other hon. Members have said before making one or two points based on my own personal modest media experience. The serial father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark), said that we would be better employed discussing matters relating to the internet. There is real concern in the House about the internet, and about the matter that appears on it. If my hon. Friend wishes to introduce a private Member's Bill to seek to regulate that, he can put me down as a sponsor, because I strongly believe that he is right. However, I do not think that that gainsays the importance of the measure that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury is seeking to introduce this morning; it might only be a small step, but it is an important one. Far too often, we talk in the House about doing things, and stress the need to deal with certain matters, but then do nothing. We have before us this morning the opportunity to take a very small step. We have all been here on Friday mornings when Members have introduced their private Members' Bills, and we are often told that the legislation is imperfect because it is badly drafted or does not go to the heart of this or that issue. In another life, I regularly chair Government Bill Committees, and I would not even begin to hazard a guess at the number of Government amendments that have been tabled in this Session of Parliament to the Government's own legislation. So, for any Member to stand up and say that this or that piece of a private Member's Bill is mildly imperfect is absolute nonsense. The purpose of this morning's debate is to take an issue and to ask whether it is important, and to determine whether the measure before us seeks to address it. If the answer is yes, the Bill will deserve a Second Reading. I shall try to demonstrate that I believe that the answer is yes, and that any Member, on either side of the House, who seeks to prevent the Bill from getting a Second Reading is doing a disservice to the House, to the legislative process and, dare I say it, to the public whom we represent. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) referred to age ratings, and to the fact that society had changed. He knows a great deal more about film than I do; it is arguable that he knows a great deal more about most things than I do. So far as changes in society are concerned, however, I can, simply by virtue of longevity, say that I have experienced slightly more than he has. As a fully paid-up aspirant geriatric, I am prepared to stand here and say that I do not believe that the fact that society has changed means that it has automatically changed for the better. Quite the reverse, in fact. The quality of programmes on television today is nothing like as good as it has been in the past. That is not to say that there are no good programmes being made today; there are. However, the quantity of nudity and bad language—and the paucity of invention and imagination—in many programmes leaves a huge amount to be desired, and I am certain that it has an effect on society. It is no surprise whatsoever to me that, by and large, the British nation is pretty depressed: one only has to sit and watch an evening's viewing full of soap operas, which I think I am right in saying are universally depressing. Let us consider the storylines. When did anybody in a soap opera enjoy anything? When was anybody in a soap opera happy? I am prepared to put a small amount of money on the fact that that has an effect on society. We will be told—I will be told—that television merely reflects society. I am sorry, but I believe that television takes a lead. I feel that very strongly, because for 20 years of the early part of my career, before I came into this House, I was a television producer and director. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford mentioned my brief association with Miss Biddy Baxter. I am modestly proud of the fact that for six months of those 20 years, I was a director of ““Blue Peter””, but I am much more proud of the fact that I made for Thames Television a series of programmes called ““White Light””, which were made for teenagers. The first of that series was afforded a BAFTA nomination, and it came second. In all modesty, I have to say that there were only two entries. ““White Light”” was screened well before the threshold in the early hours of the evening. As a result of an item that I put out in the first series, I was hauled before what I think was then called the Independent Television Commission and asked to explain myself. The item in question was about drug taking. It was put on the screen quite deliberately at a very early hour in the evening. I cannot recall every detail, but I can recall that the final shot of the item was a very explicit one of a body in a mortuary drawer, and of the drawer then being slammed shut. Not entirely surprisingly, that one shot caused very considerable offence to some people; indeed, that did not surprise me at all. My justification was that I believed that if we were to send out a message to young people that drugs are bad—and they are—we had to do so to an audience who might just be influenced by it, and at a time when they might see it. So when I was hauled before the bishops of the ITC, that was the argument that I and my presenter, who was also dragged up before the beak, deployed. The ITC accepted my argument without question, having heard what we were about. The reason why the ITC accepted that argument is that it understood, as we understood, that what appears on the screen influences people. It really is as simple as that. I am not going to try to intellectualise this—I am not even capable of doing so. What I do know is that, for example, companies spend millions of pounds on advertising on the screen to influence people. They do not advertise cornflakes, soap powder and cars into the ether for no good purpose; they do it because they believe that they will sell those products. They do it because they know that those fleeting, flickering images influence people's behaviour. That is what this is about. The argument is frequently deployed—to some extent it has been this morning, although less so than I thought it might be—that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that any of the filth, violence and degrading sexuality that is allowed to appear on the cinema screen, on the small screen and in video games has any real effect on people. Of course there is not, because it is not possible to exercise a control. One cannot expose 50 14-year-olds to violence on the screen, and take an identical group of 50 14-year-olds that are not exposed to that and say, ““Well, the first group thinks this and the other group thinks that, so QED.”” It does not work like that. However, what we do know is that there are sufficient examples of what is known as copycat crime to indicate that it is very possible indeed—not in any normal person, probably, but certainly in those who may already have some leaning toward violence, physical or sexual—that such images will trigger a response. Are we prepared to go on taking that chance? We can intellectualise this as much as we like. We can be very liberal. We can say that people have a right to see and hear whatever it is they wish to see and hear, or we can respond to what I believe is the public mood and say, ““Here is a generation of children and young people who deserve our protection—the protection of this House—from matter that may affect them adversely and may affect their lives””. I believe that we have a duty to take that step. I am not here to say that I believe that every dot and comma of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury is necessarily perfect, but I defy anybody in this Chamber this morning to look in the eye a constituent who is a parent and say that it does not deserve a Second Reading. It does, and I wish my hon. Friend well with it.