§ `(1) Where the Secretary of State proposes to make a designation under section 4 of this Act, he shall lay particulars of his proposal before both Houses of Parliament and shall not make the proposed designation until after the end of the period of forty days beginning with the day on which the particulars of his proposal were so laid.
§ (2) If, within the period mentioned in subsection (1) above, either House resolves that the Secretary of State should not make the proposed designation, the Secretary of State shall not do so (but without prejudice to his power to lay before Parliament particulars of further proposals in accordance with that subsection).
§ (3) For the purposes of subsection (1) above—
- (a) where particulars of a proposal are laid before each House of Parliament on different days, the later day shall be taken to be the day on which the particulars were laid before both Houses
- (b) in reckoning any period of forty days, no account shall be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days.'— [Mr. Bright.]
§ Brought up, and read the First time.
9.41 am§ Mr. Graham Bright (Luton, South)I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I am sure that new clause 1 will be welcomed by the whole House, especially by those right hon. and hon. Members who were members of the Committee. It requires the Secretary of State to lay before each House of Parliament particulars of any proposals to make a designation under clause 4. That will not be by way of statutory instrument, but the Secretary of State's proposal will be subject to a procedure that is similar to the negative resolution procedure. The Secretary of State is not permitted to make the proposed designation within 40 days of laying his proposals or at all if, within 40 days, either House resolves that he should not do so. Subsection (3) of new clause 1 describes how the period of 40 days is to be computed.
In Committee, several right hon. and hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell), my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) and the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), expressed anxiety that the Bill as drafted gives the Secretary of State carte blanche to appoint a person or persons as the designated authority without the need to seek parliamentary approval. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has made it clear all along that if Parliament grants him the necessary powers he proposes to designate the principal officers of the British Board of Film Censors. That has been the subject of extensive debate during the passage of the Bill, as I am sure everyone is aware.
My hon. Friend the Minister has proposed several changes to the constitution and structure of the board. If it was a case of having power only to make that one designation I would doubt whether there was much point in making it subject to a specific parliamentary procedure as my right hon. and learned Friend's proposals will have 611 been thoroughly aired during the Bill's proceedings. However, clause 4(4) empowers the Secretary of State to make a fresh designation. As I said in Committee, I have a good deal of sympathy for the view, which was shared on both sides of the Committee, that any such designation should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. My hon. Friend the Minister undertook in Committee to look into the possibility of incorporating in the Bill a parliamentary procedure for the first and further designations. That is what new clause 1 achieves. It ensures that Parliament has the opportunity to play a part in any designation under clause 4 and as such responds to the understandable anxieties expressed by several right hon. and hon. Members in Committee. I am pleased to commend it to the House.
§ Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey)I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on one of the two fundamental parts of the Bill. On Second Reading I was happy to be a sponsor of the Bill. That is still the case, but I have serious reservations about parts of it and parts of the procedures that it will provide. I am aware that, in Committee — I was not a member of it — there was perhaps most debate on the body that would do the censoring of videos. It has always been clear that, if the Home Secretary were to support the hon. Member for Luton, South (Mr. Bright), the body would be similar to the British Board of Film Censors.
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I and others are worried that new clause I will allow the Bill to go through without the House knowing what type of body will later have the power, having been designated by the Secretary of State, to ban certain videos in certain conditions. We are worried that it will be only at a later stage that we shall have the opportunity to discuss the composition of that body. I do not object to the body's composition being discussed at suitable length. That is good, as it is important that it is regarded as the best and most appropriate for the decisions it must take. However, to pass the Bill now and so take it two thirds of the way down the road to approval, only the censoring body remaining to be put in place, would be rather like writing a blank cheque. There is a danger that, if legislation on the statute book requires only an order to implement its final parts, it is far more likely to be implemented. The House has sovereign authority to reject the Home Secretary's proposal and to send it back to the drawing board, but I doubt whether that would happen.
I am worried about whether the British Board of Film Censors, even in amended form, is suitable to perform the functions that the Bill contemplates for it. At the moment, the BBFC has a responsibility for censoring by way of approval or disapproval at a preliminary stage films for showing in licensed premises that are ultimately the responsibility of local authorities. It is for those elected bodies — local authorities — to take a decision. The BBFC therefore has no legal, statutory or final say and it was regarded by the Williams committee in 1979 as a body with very little official status. The problem with putting the same body into a similar position with regard to videos is that we shall set up a body which must censor material that will be shown in premises that are licensed for the purpose and which local authorities have a duty to control and material that will be sold over the counter and shown 612 in people's homes. I want to be assured that the body that does that censoring is representative and accountable to the public.
Bearing in mind the fact that we are anxious not to add an ill-defined extra category to the law that defines what is obscene, the best analogy that I can find—I recognise that there are practical difficulties — is the jury of 12 adults who determine a suspect's guilt or innocence. That at least is a random selection of people who can therefore be regarded as impartial. Depending on the criteria of what can be banned, such a body would have the virtue of not being comprised of experts, quasi-experts or nominees, which is what I fear the BBFC or its equilavent would be.
Many people are worried that the Bill seeks to do something fairly new—to intrude into what adults can purchase and take into their homes. We are aware of the danger to children, and no one would wish to do anything that harms them, but given that the responsibility for children and their behaviour must rest with their parents or legal guardians, we should be reassured that the body that will have such powers is properly accountable and decides fairly in a way that is representative of the community on whose behalf it is deciding. I and other hon. Members will wish to be satisfied that giving the Home Secretary the power to lay before the House an order setting out the details of the body will not guarantee that the body is a selection of appointed or designated nominees under criteria that do not have proper regard to the democratic and accountable requirements that exist in the licensing for public performance of films in cinemas by local authorities.
We cannot give more power to the state in relation to videos than we do in relation to cinemas. I seek reassurance from the Minister or from the hon. Member for Luton, South about the way in which this problem will be tackled when, if this clause is passed, we come to discuss the composition of the designated authority.
§ Sir Bernard Braine (Castle Point)I have some sympathy with the views of the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), who has echoed many of the thoughts that I expressed in Committee. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State can give us the assurances that he sought, and I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend says.
I wholeheartedly support my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Mr. Bright). We have not always seen eye to eye on the way in which the Bill might achieve its objective, although we completely agree about the objective itself. I pay tribute to him for being ready to listen to argument and to accept that some changes would have to be made. He handled the Bill in Committee with surefootedness, and I am delighted to join hands with him today in support of this new clause and other amendments.
I concede that there are more ways than one of achieving the Bill's objective. If our amendments are accepted, the Bill will deal effectively with a grave and growing social evil that no caring and civilised society should tolerate. From the outset of our debates on the Bill, I have been worried about two matters. The first is how to stop in their tracks those who make, sell or hire video material portraying excessive violence, sadistic cruelty, explicit sex, including every form of deviancy, and the sexual humiliation and degradation of women, for viewing in the home where it can be seen and is being seen by 613 young children and adolescents. Bearing in mind the warning of the Lord Chief Justice a few weeks ago, we should not forget that such films are also seen by many unstable adults.
My second worry is how we can ensure that, whatever machinery the Bill provides to check this filthy and pernicious trade — I refer to only a small part of an exciting, growing and important new activity—the body appointed to certify video recordings as being suitable for viewing in the home or elsewhere is answerable to Parliament and takes heed of public opinion.
It is much to the credit of the members of the Committee that we reached broad agreement on both counts. The Committee accepted my amendment requiring the designated authority to have specific regard to whether video works are suitable for viewing in the home. I demonstrated to the Committee's satisfaction that video recordings such as I have described not only disturb young children — teachers, paediatricians and psychologists have repeatedly warned us of the damage being done—but are affecting adolescents who are fed an unremitting diet of such material—sometimes, incredible though it may seem, encouraged by their parents. One parent recently bleated to a court that he had thought the experience might help his son to grow up, after the boy had been convicted of a grievous attack upon a woman when he turned his fantasies into reality. The fact is that fantasies encouraged by videos are being acted out in vicious and brutal assaults upon women. I mentioned in Committee several cases that have been brought before the courts, and in no instance was that challenged. That is not surprising, since I had the full support of the Magistrates Association.
In Committee, a trial took place at the Old Bailey in which a husband and wife pleaded guilty to committing acts of gross indecency and indecent assaults upon their son aged 10 and their daughter aged 11, after jointly viewing pornographic videos. The father admitted incest with his daughter, aided and abetted by the mother. The parents were sent to prison and the children were taken into care, and the judge described the videos as
a vicious and evil intrusion into the family home.
§ Mr. Tim Brinton (Gravesham)Can my hon. Friend tell the House whether that pornographic film was hired or purchased from a videogram shop as we are talking about in the Bill?
§ Sir Bernard BraineI cannot tell the House that, and I do not regard it as relevant, although the police have given me some information about the films. This is only one example of many cases, and if the House wishes, I could give it a whole list——
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)Order This is only the first new clause of the Bill, and we have many amendments to cover. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will relate his remarks more directly to the new clause.
§ Sir Bernard BraineWhen my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) has been in the House a little longer, he will know about the rules of Report stage. It is not that I cannot answer his question, but that I should be out of order if I did so.
The second direction in which the Committee moved was to tighten considerably the machinery for certifying 614 video material, and the new clause takes the process further. The House might ask why it is necessary to tighten the machinery. In Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South and my hon. Friend the Minister said that they believed that the British Board of Film Censors should be the authority that determined whether a video recording should receive a certificate for public or restricted showing, or whether it should be rejected.
I must tell the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey that some of us had grave doubts about that, since the board is not a statutory body. For historic reasons, it is appointed by elements in the film industry. It has no set rules or criteria and has presided over a deterioration in the standard of films to the point where excessive violence, explicit sex and obscene language now pass for entertainment. Whether this merely mirrors the decline in standards and the growth of violence in society as a whole, or whether both are the product in part of this weak, ineffective or permissive system, I leave hon. Members to decide for themselves. I do not disguise from the House that the track record of the BBFC did not inspire confidence in me. Up to a year ago, as the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell) told us, the Government took the same view.
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However, when my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary explained to us that the Government had come to the conclusion that, instead of appointing a new statutory body it would be best to build on what exists, he did so in a convincing way. Our criticism was met. There is now to be proper accountability. The new clause ensures that the members of the board will be appointed at the pleasure of the Home Secretary. That is good. My hon. Friend assured us that the board is to have additional examiners to deal with the increased work. That is good, too. There is to be an advisory or consultative council which will be representative of the community as a whole, and that is essential. There is to be an additional requirement that the designated authority will have to publish an annual report. That is the subject of a later amendment, and such a provision is essential if proper parliamentary scrutiny is to be maintained.
Taken together, all these welcome safeguards have disposed me to support my hon. Friend's new clause. I commend it to the House.
§ Mr. BrintonI begin by declaring my interest. I am a consultant for the British Videogram Association, and because of the breadth of this Bill I had better make sure that I mention that I am a director of a company called Airtime Publicity (Newsflash) Limited and a consultant to Communications Strategy, a public relations firm. Neither of these latter firms will be affected by the Bill at the moment, but I see that they might be in the future because it is so wide.
I welcome the new clause. I listened carefully and with great sympathy to what the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) said about it, and he made one or two telling points. However, here we have at least half a loaf where we had none before. On Second Reading, I expressed considerable anxiety about the wide powers designated to the Home Secretary under the original terms of the Bill and I felt strongly that there was a lack of accountability to Parliament. This will be remedied in part by the new clause.
615 I mentioned criticism, and my anxieties are well known to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Mr. Bright) who has done well in trying to steer this difficult Bill through the House. When I criticise, I hope that I shall always try to do so in a constructive and sensible manner. I have no wish to kill the primary objective of the Bill, which is basically to rid this country of the completely impossible video nasty and to put some guidance in the hands of parents and other adults as to what they are purchasing or hiring in video shops. My criticism is that, as it has progressed, the Bill has gone considerably further.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South, I wish to achieve broad consensus as the Bill goes through its stages. Consensus was there in Committee, but it was a consensus that lacked two important voices. The first was the voice of the ordinary customer at the video shop, not the extreme, unusual person looking for the perverted films that my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) referred to, but ordinary people who use videos. The other missing voice was that of not just the video trade but the whole trade of television and film production. There are technical matters involved in advancing towards classification and censorship which were not fully considered in Committee. Therefore, I welcome this new clause, which will give Parliament another chance to look in detail at the sort of designated body that will be doing this job.
I tabled an amendment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I do not seek to challenge your ruling about it. It suggested that we should make the designated body any other body but the BBFC, but I do not wish to pursue that too far. One point that made me feel that way, and which again makes me welcome the new clause, is that it is clear to me from the Committee proceedings that one of the greatest difficulties for the trade and production of films is the decision by the Committee —I believe that it will go through today—that there will be different standards of censorship for the home from those for the cinema. I know the arguments, and I do not wish to pursue them now, but if we are to have different standards, I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to consider in the intervening period whether, when he comes to Parliament as the new clause suggests, he should designate a different body from the BBFC because the issue would be plain and clear to everyone in the trade and the potential user of the videogram. I support the new clause.
§ Mr. Matthew Parris (Derbyshire, West)I welcome the new clause. I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine), and I am sure that it cannot be what the Lord Chief Justice has in mind, that we should have a system of censorship designed to ensure that nobody of unstable mind is disturbed. If we had such a censorship, that would rule out much of our art and literature.
I point out to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) that, although most of us agree with some of the reservations about the wide leeway that the Bill leaves the Government to appoint whatever board they choose, the new clause is designed, at least in part, to meet those anxieties by allowing the House to look at who it is that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has in mind, and to say yea or nay. For that reason I welcome this new clause, and for similar reasons I welcome the amendment that we shall be debating next.
§ Mr. Peter Pike (Burnley)I support and welcome the new clause, which takes note of a point debated at length in Committee. What it proposes is the right way to do this. The BBFC should do this job because it was evident when we debated this matter in Committee that there is no evidence to prove that if any other body were designated it would do the job any better than the BBFC. We could end up setting up another body that would be just as much criticised as the BBFC. That would be nonsense. The Bill gives the Minister the opportunity to change the body at a later date if it should become evident that it was not doing the job as it should.
It is also important to recall, as the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) said, that there are two different standards. In one of the amendments passed in Committee, there was an important compromise. It was added that videos should be looked at in the context of the fact that they are viewed in the home. That is an important criterion. If that sets a dual standard, it is right to do so, and that was the overwhelming view of the Committee.
I welcome the new clause and shall vote for it.
§ Mr. Denis Howell (Birmingham, Small Heath)May I start by saying that, in my judgment, the Committee stage of the Bill was one of the most constructive in which I have taken part in my long service in the House. It applied itself most excellently and with common sense to a modern evil that has been growing and causing considerable concern. The Committee refused to be stampeded by noises off from the direction of the Home Secretary speaking in Northumberland, and refused to allow the Bill to become one of general censorship, which is what some people wanted. We have not got it entirely right, but we should nevertheless congratulate—and I do so at once—the hon. Member for Luton, South (Mr. Bright) on the leadership that he has shown throughout the Bill.
May I also say—and I shall never say it again in this Parliament—that I congratulate the Minister in charge of the Bill, who was extremely helpful at all stages in getting the Committee to reach the workable compromises and agreements that were necessary. Lastly, I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing us a few minutes on this first new clause to express some general sentiments. We have all established, as it were, our credentials.
We have made considerable progress—such progress, indeed, that most of the offensive, sadistic, nauseating and sexually degrading videos have already been removed from the shelves in most video dealers' premises. That is a considerable achievement, before the Bill has even reached the statute book.
However, we must not be complacent. I am critical of the video trade. It seems to be re-emerging. Now that it thinks that the heat has gone out of the Bill, and that public opinion has perhaps been assuaged, it seems to think that it can start campaigns by intimidating Members of Parliament. I exclude, of course, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) from my strictures.
Nevertheless, I want to draw attention to an extraordinary letter that we all received, telling us—it is important to get the matter on the record straight away—that there is to be an all-night showing by a arm called Palace Videos of a large number of the most objectionable videos. The firm completely failed to understand that the Bill has nothing to do with the Obscene Publications Act. If the Director of Public Prosecutions 617 wants to prosecute, as he certainly should, some of the terrible obscene publications — if they were made here they would be a disgrace to the British video film industry, but it emerged in Committee that most of them were made overseas — he must retain the right to do that quite independently of who the designated authority happens to be.
That underlines the importance of the new clause. The hon. Member for Luton, South meets a point that I raised rather strongly, and I am grateful to him for doing so. It is important that the designated authority should be known to Parliament and subject to debates. One of the films that is to be shown all night is the subject of a prosecution, so it would be out of order for me to say much about it. It is called "The Burning". A number of others are listed, but I shall not give them the benefit of free publicity by naming them. There are about eight or 10 of them, and they are quite disgraceful.
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There are other organisations — again, I do not believe that the hon. Member for Gravesham was speaking on their behalf — such as the Video Retailers' Association, which was mentioned in the Birmingham Evening Mail last night. I have already had letters on the subject. The paper says:
The Nottingham-based Video Retailers' Association, with 150 members in the West Midlands, claims … that many films on general release will no longer be available for home viewers".That is completely untrue. It is a campaign based on a deliberate falsehood. Moreover, some of us have told retailers who have written to us from our constituencies—I have, anyway — that they must know that it is a falsehood. There will be nothing that can be shown in cinemas that cannot be shown in the home.I shall come back in a moment to the British Board of Film Censors, but the fact is that the board will refuse a certificate for the evil videos that all of us here believe should not be shown. Everything else in the Bill is about classification. That is what the Bill is about. Anyone will be able to buy or rent a classified video for showing at home, although it must be said that 18R videos, as I understand, will have regard to the fact that some sexual films will have to be bought or hired in a shop that is specially registered for such films. If people want to do that, they can still do it. People are not prevented from seeing those films. I object to the Video Retailers' Association putting out falsehoods about what is to happen, and urging their members to get their clients to write to Members of Parliament. I give due notice to any constituents who write to me that they will get a strong reply, and the dealers who put them up to it will get an even stronger one.
§ Mr. BrintonThe right hon. Gentleman said that all films classified for showing in the cinema could as a result of these classifications be seen in the home. If the standards of censorship are to be different, however, some must go out of the window at the 18R level. So it is not all films. The question is which films?
§ Mr. HowellThe hon. Gentleman told us that he is a consultant to the trade, and I hope he will not mind if I say that he has sat through all our Committee proceedings and clearly still does not understand what we were doing. We said that, in the classification, the category, the British 618 Board of Film Censors should have to have regard to the fact that videos might be seen in the home by everyone in the neighbourhood, including children, but that that is not the case when one exercises one's right to see the same film as a film in a cinema. That must be right, and we shall come back to the matter later.
It must be right for Parliament and the designated authority to have regard to something that has not been universally shown in the home hitherto, but is now available for that, as distinct from being shown in a cinema where it is available only to people of 18 or more. It cannot be right that something which up to now has been restricted to adults in a cinema should be universally available in the home without our taking cognisance of that fact, and that is what the Bill does.
§ Sir Bernard BraineDoes the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is a difference between showing a film in the controlled atmosphere of either a public cinema or a registered sex cinema, and seeing it in the home, where a child can stop it and linger over certain scenes, because that is what they do? There is the world of difference between the two things. There should be two standards. The home must be protected.
§ Mr. HowellI do not go all the way with the hon. Gentleman because I am glad to say that the children in my home do not do that. I do not know what happens to the children in the hon. Gentleman's home. I agree with him, of course, that if there is universal availability, we have to have regard to that fact.
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) cast doubts on the BBFC. Some hon. Members started out wondering whether that would be the appropriate organisation but we made much progress in that matter in Committee as well. Some of us have been to see that body at work and we have now learnt that those who make the classifications will be widened. Although that body has existed for many years, until now it has been the creature of the film industry. It will now have a measure of accountability to the Home Office, and through it to the House as a result of this amendment. That is a satisfactory safeguard.
I listened to the hon. Gentleman with great interest. I hope that he will not mind if I say that his speech represented an impractical libertarianism, or an impractical liberalism. If the hon. Gentleman were to have a look at the work of that body — I hope that he will — he would see that it has to classify hundreds, indeed probably thousands, of films. If there were no BBFC there would have to be a body remarkably like it. With great respect, the work could not possibly be done on the jury system. However attractive that would to a libertarian, it is not really in the realms of possibility.
§ Mr. Simon HughesI am concerned not so much about which body does the work, but who is on that body. Many are concerned that when such bodies become state quangos they are filled with the great and good who are not representative of the British public because they are specialists in the film or video industry. I hope that we shall be assured that the composition of the board will reflect the ordinary views of people who are probably slightly less intellectual than the present membership of the BBFC.
§ Mr. HowellI agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is always difficult to remember one's own speeches, but if 619 I remember rightly I referred in Committee to the membership of that body as the sociologically motivated members of our society. There was not a single trade unionist on it. As far as I could see, there was nobody who had been in industry. There were no managing directors or managers. That seemed to be a deficiency. If that is what the hon. Gentleman is saying, I have some sympathy with him. Nevertheless, when we looked at the list it was obviously a big improvement on what had gone before. However, I am sure there is room for further improvement and I hope that what we have said will be considered by the BBFC, as I am sure it will be by the Home Office. Therefore, we have no alternative but to say that a re-jigged BBFC, wider in its concept already, is yet another step in the right direction that has been achieved by the Bill.
I advise my hon. Friends to support the Bill and the constructive amendments that are coming forward to meet the points raised in Committee and to help the Bill make as much progress as possible today.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Mellor)First, may I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving us latitude in the course of the debate, it being the first occasion on which the Bill has returned to the Floor of the House after a highly successful Committee stage. May I say on behalf of the Government how grateful we are to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Mr. Bright) for his work. We have boundless admiration not only for the skill, determination and authority with which he dealt with the Bill in the House and in Committee, but for the tireless way in which he met the various interest groups and put across to a wide public, through the press, what his Bill is about. If I had a hat to take off, I should take it off to him this morning.
I join the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell) in saying that, although I have not sat in the House for anything like as long as he has, it will be many years before I sit on a Committee where the atmosphere is as conducive to a sensible, common sense consideration of the Bill as it was on this measure. All who participated in the debates benefited enormously. We all learnt something, not least myself. It is encouraging that several hon. Members, who although they agreed on the principles diverged on the details, have come together on a number of crucial points. That is very helpful.
I am glad to see many Committee members here this morning—the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike), whose contributions contained robust common sense, and with which I almost always found myself in agreement, and my hon. Friends the Members for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), for Lincoln (Mr. Carlisle), for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) and for Harlow (Mr. Hayes)—all of whom played a leading role in the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) has freely admitted that he changed his mind on a number of points in Committee, and I am grateful to him for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris) raised crucial points on several clauses with cool eloquence. We should have been diminished as a Committee if he had not done so and I am glad that he has returned to the Floor of the House as a supporter of the Bill.
The Committee provided the opportunity to thrash out a number of detailed points that will be recognised in 620 amendments that are being tabled today, and obviously I hope that they will commend themselves to the House. It also provided the opportunity to thrash out a number of points that have caused concern. For instance, there was the question whether the BBFC should be designated and, as has been evident today, a wide-ranging agreement was achieved.
One thing that the Committee did not do — I look menacingly at my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton), because I do not want him to be able to find a plank for his opposition to any part of the measure that does not exist—was materially to change the Bill. The Bill returns on Report in pretty much the same form as it took on Second Reading. There was one important but purely declaratory amendment adding the three words "in the home", to make it clear on the face of the Bill what we all knew we were doing from the outset, which was to decide what standards should be applicable to material that would be widely circulated in our homes outside of age-restricted cinemas. There was also one purely drafting amendment. If my hon. Friend wants to take issue with the Bill, let him do so as it was originally conceived and drafted. There is nothing to add fuel to any flame that he wishes to set alight in the House. We looked at areas where the detail of the Bill should be polished up, and that was enormously valuable.
Let me pay the warmest tribute to the constructive attitude of the right hon. Member for Small Heath, who had it in his power in Committee, as the Opposition spokesman always does, to be difficult. Where he needed to make a point he did so with the vigour that we all know and that he has deployed this morning, but he always made it clear that he was looking, as we were, to find an effective measure that he could take back to his constituents, just as we could take back to ours. He has played a major role in ensuring that the measure proceeded as it did.
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) made a good speech. I am aware that the Bill gives a good deal of power to the Home Secretary. My right hon. and learned Friend and I are extremely anxious to ensure that the House is left in no doubt at any stage that that power should be exercised responsibly and is to be hedged around with all appropriate safeguards, including the deference to the overriding power of Parliament to veto what we do.
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As I was aware of just how much power was being given to the Home Secretary in giving him the right to designate a body to carry out perhaps the most difficult and sensitive task in a free society —that of censorship—I felt that I should lay my cards on the table at the earliest stage. Although it was a much more controversial proposition then than happily it is now, that is why I said on Second Reading that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary would designate the BBFC, and that remains our view.
As a result of the points made in Committee and of meetings that are still going on between us and the BBFC, I was able to lay a structure before the Committee to meet a number of the important points raised about accountability. The BBFC should materially reconstitute itself, not because of any criticism about the way in which it has performed its task, but in recognition of the fact that it is being given a substantial extra task. I do not wish to 621 repeat all that I have said in Committee, but we have it in mind that the board should be expanded to take on at least two vice-presidents in addition to the president and the secretary, and that all the officers should be acceptable to the Secretary of State, who will obviously look for a wide range of experience when agreeing to their appointment.
There is then the question of increasing the number of examiners and ensuring that they are as broadly based as possible. When Parliament speaks in a triple alliance, and when representatives of the three major parties all agree that the examiners should be drawn from as wide a range of experience as possible, I know that the BBFC will understand that it is prudent and advisable for it to take heed. I know that it will do so and achieve as broad a range as possible. We shall make every endeavour to ensure that that is so.
I thought it extremely important to take up enthusiastically the BBFC's suggestion that there should be an advisory council containing representatives of the wider community of local authorities, as well as people of independent worth and representatives of the industry to whom the BBFC could put various points of interest, and who would themselves be able to make any points of principle to the BBFC which they thought important about the way in which that body carried out its task. Finally, an independent appeals procedure would ensure that there was no arbitary interference with the rights of the commercial company to distribute perfectly acceptable material.
I hope that I have fully met the points raised. I am aware that there is a significant parliamentary dimension to the debate. Throughout our proceedings on the Bill the Home Office will make clear exactly how is chooses to use its powers. We believe that there is a role for Parliament and that the Secretary of State should give Parliament the opportunity—if hon. Members so wish—to debate the formal designation once the Bill is enacted. If the Secretary of State should ever subsequently feel that he has to use his powers to designate another body, that should be the subject of the same parliamentary procedure. Later, an amendment will be proposed that an annual report must be laid before Parliament so that hon. Members who are greatly interested in such matters can know what is going on.
I take issue on one small point. It cannot be said that something that is under the control of the Home Secretary, and through him under the control of the House, is in any sense less open to democratic control than something given to the local authorities. It would be a perverse view of our system of representative democracy to suggest that something controlled by Parliament was less democratically accountable than something that went through the local authorities. Indeed, I suspect that in many instances the contrary might well be the case.
§ Mr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton)My hon. Friend has spoken about reconstituting the BBFC to take account of the Bill's provisions, but will he make it clear now to those of us who were not privileged to serve on that Committee what money will be made available from private rather than public resources to pay for the increased number of staff and the changes that he envisages? That is an 622 important point, and hon. Members would welcome it if my hon. Friend took an early opportunity to make the position clear to the public.
§ Mr. MellorDiscussions are still going on about the precise arrangements that will be made, but it is envisaged that, as at the moment, the BBFC will be self-financing and will charge a fee for considering videos. After all, most of the videos that it will consider are being distributed in the hope and confident expectation of substantial financial gain. Indeed, that expectation is normally realised. Thus, there seems to be no reason why fees should not be charged of the type that are already charged for cinematograph exhibition. We do not envisage any cost to public funds as a result of establishing that system.
I support the new clause, which has obviously been brought forward after careful discussion with my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. We support the new clause and in doing so demonstrate once again my right hon. and learned Friend's good faith in seeking to give the House the maximum opportunity to make its view clear on such difficult matters. In a sense, we are adding an extra parliamentary hurdle to the Secretary of State's exercise of his discretion. That is important and significant, and I hope that the House will accept the new clause in the spirit in which it is being offered.
§ Mr. LawrenceI do not wish to delay our proceedings, as I should like us to progress as quickly as possible, but I had hoped that my hon. Friend would be a little more specific in his reply to my question. I am grateful for his assurance that the public will not have to pay for the increased costs involved. However, I wonder whether he can be more specific about the amount of extra money that is to be charged to the purchasers of these items as a result of these provisions. Perhaps we could have some idea of the percentage increase. I know that in recent months such matters have been thoroughly gone into. By now it surely should be possible for the Minister to tell us how much more these items will cost in the shops. If my hon. Friend can help us on that point, it will reassure the public.
§ Mr. Simon HughesI wish to raise one point in response to the Minister's helpful and, I hope, welcome public exposition of some of the points that he made in Committee——
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerOrder. We are on Report and not in Committee. The hon. Gentleman has already spoken. Was he intervening in the Minister's speech, or had the Minister concluded his speech?
§ Mr. MellorI had concluded my speech — not, I suspect, before time.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.