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

I could not answer that question completely honestly by saying that I am entirely comfortable with it, because I do not necessarily know enough about it. Perhaps a more accurate question might be whether a Select Committee's scrutiny of a range of appointments to the BBFC is likely to increase that representation. As far as I am aware, appointments to both the management committee and the executive of the BBFC, as well as to the video appeals committee, are undertaken according to Nolan principles, so those appointments are as transparent and objective as most public appointments. In that respect, I have no reason not to be satisfied with them. Although I regularly take on the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about some of the cronies that it appoints to other bodies, it does not appear in this case to be involved in such appointments. I come to the issue of appeals. We have had a long debate about whether an early-day motion procedure is appropriate. As I have made clear in interventions, there are two systems in place at the BBFC, one for films and one for video games. The BBFC has an advisory role as far as films are concerned. It can only advise local authorities on classification; it is up to the local authority, because it has licensed the cinema, whether a film should be screened. As I mentioned, it is a delightful fact that the city of Glasgow remains implacably opposed to the screening of ““Life of Brian””, although one can presumably go into any video or DVD store in Glasgow and rent it. As I said in an intervention during the excellent speech of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), it is interesting that local authorities—the democratic guardians of the nation's morals in this instance—have more often downgraded the classification than upgraded it. In fact, there is no recent example of them upgrading a classification. ““This is England”” was downgraded to a 15 rating, and ““Spider-Man””, ““Sweet Sixteen”” and ““Billy Elliot”” were all given lower ratings.