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

My understanding is that the BBFC is about to embark, if it has not done so already, on the exercise of reviewing the guidelines; I stand to be corrected if I am wrong. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I should like to refer to some of that evidence later. Perhaps less consensus exists now than at any other time in relation to what adults may properly access. There are potential tensions between the proscription of obscene or violent material and the right to freedom of expression. I should like to read out a short quote from the Library briefing, which refers to the seminal textbook on this subject by Geoffrey Robertson QC and Andrew Nicol QC, experts in media law:"““The deep division in society over the proper limits for sexual permissiveness is mirrored by an inconsistent and ineffective censorship of publications that may offend or entertain, corrupt or enlighten, according to the taste and character of individual readers. The problem with drawing a legal line between moral outrage and personal freedom has become intractable at a time when one person's obscenity is another person's bedtime reading””—" or, in this context, viewing. That is the difficulty that we face, first, in general terms, in trying to find the balance that reflects those two conflicting interests, and secondly, in how we go about policing it. The key question is that of the guidelines themselves. In effect, the Bill proposes a form of parliamentary censorship over those guidelines through the Home Affairs Committee or the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. That gives rise to the issue of the extent to which Parliament is truly representative of British society. We are, of course, elected by our constituents to come here and represent them. However, when I look around this Chamber I see that we are all white, probably middle-class men, with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan)—one of the Whips—and two, probably middle-class women: my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), the other Whip. I see very few young people—[Interruption.] Perhaps I should back off a little here. I do not know how old the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) is, but he is certainly not the sort of teenager we have been talking about. We are not representative of the class base of our country at large. We are not yet representative, by a long way, of the balance between the sexes, and certainly not as regards faith or race.