§ Order read for resuming of adjourned debate on Question [25 April].
§ Amendment No. 12 proposed: In page 3, line 17, leave out '18' and insert '16', instead thereof.—[Mr. Dubs.]
§ Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.
2.20 pm§ Mr. Ian Mikardo (Bow and Poplar)I think that hon. Members will be aware that this is the third time I have attempted to say a few words in support of this amendment which was moved many moons ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs). On the first occasion on which I endeavoured to explain why I thought that my hon. Friend was right to move the amendment I was brutally cut short after 28 seconds. Therefore, I was not able to deploy any substantial arguments in favour of the amendment. However, a later opportunity arose. On that occasion I was cut off after only 17 seconds, which included an intervention from the hon. Member for Surrey, South-West (Mrs. Bottomley).
I must ask the permission of the House to start from scratch. The argument is a simple one, and in dealing with it I shall address myself indirectly to amendment No. 14, which has also been selected. It is an argument about the minds of young men at the ages of 16 and 17 years. The concept of the Bill as it now is is that lads of 16 and 17 do not know anything about what used to be called euphemistically the facts of life, or sometimes called even more euphemistically the birds and the bees. The Bill contends that, against that background, we must not let 16 or 17-year-olds see anything which it would be all right for my hon. Friends, myself and Conservative Members to see. That is because it is assumed that we know about the birds and the bees and 16 and 17-year-olds do not.
That is a nonsensical proposition. When my four grandsons were teenagers about a decade ago, I used often to talk with them about the facts of life. That was because I learned a great deal from them. They were far more advanced in their mathematics than the mathematics which I learnt many years ago and so they were much more advanced than their old fogey of a grandfather in knowing about things that go on.
The idea that we old fogies can attend this place on a Friday and solemly profess to know—I am old and the Minister is preternaturally old—what is in the mind of a youngster of 16 or 17, and even worse, to profess to know what it is that will tend to corrupt and deprave a youngster of that age, is a piece of monstrous intellectual arrogance on our part.
§ Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West)I am sure that we are all listening to my hon. Friend with considerable interest and that we shall all agree with him. However, is he as surprised as I am that the Bill's sponsor has not seen fit to be with us today to see his Bill on its way? Is he surprised that the hon. Member for Daveyhulme (Mr. Churchill) has not seen fit to join us? Does that not display some arrogance and even lack of interest on his part?
§ Mr. MikardoIt would not be for me to pass moral judgments on another hon. Member. The sponsor was not present when we last discussed the Bill and nor was he present on the occasion before that. I suspect strongly that 1360 his enthusiasm for his Bill has waned rapidly. Those who have followed the progress of the Bill will recall that he has knocked it down as if it were a Meccano set and rebuilt the bits into a different structure on three occasions during the Bill's consideration.
The hon. Member for Daveyhulme (Mr. Churchill) started with fine intentions. He started with a realisation that the present law on obscenity is nonsensical. I utterly agree with him about that. I do not know any reasonable person who could disagree.
Having drawn his place in the ballot, the hon. Member for Davyhulme thought that, as the existing law was nonsense, he would try to bring in a measure that would improve it. I believe that he set out seriously to do that, and I think that he did his best, which is why I do not want to be condemnatory of him. However, he discovered, as many others have discovered before him, that when one gets into this branch of the law, one walks straight into a minefield. The difficulties of definition are so ineluctable that one is better off leaving the thing alone, for all its faults.
I voted for a Second Reading, although I thought that it was an awful Bill in its first draft. Hon. Members will recall that it had what came to be called the laundry list. It was a nonsensical Bill, which would have prevented the showing of King Lear as obscene. It would have prevented a travelogue of the city of Brussels if it included a picture of the statue of the Manneken Pis in Le Grand Place. It would have prevented the showing of many great classical works of the Italian, Flemish and other schools. Why did I vote for this nonsensical Bill? Because I hoped that in Committee we could find through our collective wisdom, a way of turning the Bill into a decent Bill.
The hon. Member for Davyhulme kept trying. When somebody told him that something would not do, he tried something else and when they said that that would not do either, he tried something else, and he got browned off in the process. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), that is why the hon. Member for Davyhulme is not here. He has come to the conclusion that he has suffered enough, and my guess is that he will not even be putting his name in the ballot for private Members' Bills next Session, least he should be tempted to venture again into this, or any other, minefield.
Look where the hon. Member has got in the end. After going round and round the houses, he has come back, in subsection (3) to the tendency to "deprave and corrupt". He has adopted the very criterion, the very form of words to which he objected so much, and his objections to which, in the first place, made him introduce the Bill.
§ Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury)Does my hon. Friend agree that in clause 2, to which his amendment relates there is in effect a new definition being brought into the law, that of a tendency to "deprave and corrupt" persons under the age of 18? The amendment being supported so ably by my hon. Friend would replace that age limit with one of 16. Would that not be of benefit to the Bill, as it is easier to prove such a tendency to "deprave and corrupt" persons under the age of 16, than it is to prove such a tendency for persons of the age of 16 or over?
§ Mr. MikardoI do not go along with my hon. Friend. I do not believe that I can estimate what would tend to deprave and corrupt him, and he could not estimate what 1361 would tend to deprave and corrupt me. It is even more clear that neither of us can remember our youth so well as to make any estimate or any judgment that is worth a farthing of what would tend to corrupt or deprave a lad of 16, 17 or 18. We are too far removed from that. My heart bled for the hon. Member for Davyhulme as I watched his agonised process or retreat from one redoubt to the next redoubt. Despite all that agony, now we have reached, in an effort to improve—
§ It being half past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean)Debate to be resumed what day? No day named.