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

That is an important point, but it also raises significant questions. As I say to my hon. Friend, we in the Conservative party want to consider ways in which the video appeals committee can provide a mechanism through which the public can appeal, but it is worth considering the difficult issue of how effective post-release appeals can be. I leave aside the issue of whether the early-day motion mechanism would be appropriate. I have to say that during the debate, it became more and more apparent that the idea of an appeal being triggered if enough MPs signed an early-day motion was a recipe for chaos and disaster, but that could well be discussed in Committee, if the Bill proceeds. The problem with post-release appeal is that one could inadvertently fuel the sales of the game that one is seeking to restrict. I have no idea what the current position is with regard to ““Manhunt 2””; I do not know whether it has been withdrawn from sale pending judicial review, but I very much doubt that it has. I suspect that the more that newspapers screamed, ““Ban this video game””, with MPs queuing up to sign the early-day motion, the more likely it would be that some of our voters would go to the shops to buy it before it was banned, perhaps to see what all the fuss was about. That is a real problem that I urge the House to consider. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury seeks to provide, through his Bill, for parliamentary scrutiny of the BBFC guidelines. The BBFC puts together the guidelines with care and scrutiny. They are not the kind of guidelines that are simply written on the back of a fag packet. As has been discussed, every four years specialist research groups are commissioned, and 11,000 members of the public are consulted, although I heard my hon. Friend's concerns about the web-based survey and the perhaps more objective research-based survey.