My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for explaining to the Committee the details of the meeting that a number of us attended last week. It was one of the most horrible meetings I have ever had to attend, but it was extremely informative. It showed the way the BBFC very diligently performs its role and achieves what most people in Britain want to see: it enables adults to view as much as they could possibly wish to—provided that it does not harm anybody else—but it is quite clear in the classification of materials and tries to limit those materials to which it would be preferable that there was no access.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is absolutely right—she has much more experience of dealing with these matters than many of the rest of us. The key factor we kept coming back to was whether something was real or realistic or could be assumed to be real for a number of reasons. We were shown a particularly horrible image that was a cartoon. There was no way that anybody could view it and consider it to be real, but what it showed was truly gruesome. In the end the BBFC had not classified it.
The Minister may say there are different elements in these amendments that are technically deficient. However, I hope that he might be able to accept some of the points being made. This is a work in progress. The way the internet is taking over this form of very adult entertainment is still unfolding; the law is clearly currently way behind the producers of it and needs to be changed. This may not be the definitive answer, but the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has put forward some very helpful suggestions.
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