§ Mr. PercivalI beg leave to present the humble Petition of Noel Haydn Batten and Laura Batten, who are constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), precluded. he feels, by Ministerial office from himself presenting the Petition. It is supported by 58,650 signatures. The
Petitioners pray to Parliament, deploring the constant use of bad language on television, the persistent misrepresentation of sex and sexual relations, resulting in both short and long-term damaging effects to family interests, and requesting Parliament to take effective measures to curtail these excesses.Amongst other material allegations, the Petition calls attention to the damage to family life by television programmes containing matter of a highly objectionable and distasteful character, by the portrayal of situations which misrepresent sexual relations, by the conditioning of viewers' minds into accepting lowered speech and moral standards and by the intolerable position into which parents are placed when their children view behaviour and hear language from well-known television personalities which their parents have taught them to be wrong.The Petition concludes with the respectful statement that the Petitioners
as in duty bound, will ever pray.
§ To lie upon the Table.