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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) on introducing his Bill. I think that this is the second time in recent years that he has been successful in the ballot. I have a little more sympathy with the aims of this Bill than I had with his last one. As I recall, I had to explain at great length why my objections to the previous Bill were justified, and I am afraid that it made little progress as a result. I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman has had to say today. There has been an interesting debate, in which people have elucidated well the serious harm that we in this House perceive is caused by some of the more obscene forms of video and film—obscene in the sense of violence in particular. I am not going to go through examples in detail. That has been done very adequately today, and if we do so there is a risk that we unwittingly give such examples publicity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) made clear. If we give them publicity, people might want to watch or buy them. What this debate is really about, or should be about—we have heard little on this from Opposition Members, except the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale)—is finding the right balance between giving people choice about what they watch, see and do without unnecessary restriction, and protecting the public from violence. In the context of this debate, we are often talking about the fear of copycat violence—people reproducing what they have seen on film. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who is no longer in the Chamber, gave the very graphic example of a case from his own constituency. However, whether we like it or not, what is being proposed does amount to censorship. The hon. Member for Canterbury said in his introduction that it is not about censorship, but I am afraid that it is. The question is whether it is good or bad censorship, whether we should be censoring such material, and if so, what the appropriate procedure is for doing so to prevent that material from getting into the public domain.