Film Classification Accountability and Openness (Hansard, 8 July 1997)

§ Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make the British Board of Film Classification accountable to Parliament; to require it to publish each year a list of its members, a register of their interests, minutes of its proceedings and copies of the expert advice it commissions; to give the Secretary of State power to dismiss its president; and for connected purposes. The British Board of Film Classification is one of the last and worst examples of complacent, arrogant, secretive self-regulation. There is growing concern at the increasing culture of violence in this country, and the British Board of Film Classification should be playing a vital role in combating it.
The board had its origins before the first world war; it was set up by the film industry to provide independent and impartial advice to local authorities—the licensing authorities—on which films should be shown in cinemas. In 1984, Parliament gave the board a more statutory power over videos—it is a criminal offence to see a video which the board has not passed—yet the organisation remains, in effect, accountable to no one. It publishes an annual report, but it contains no register of interests, little or no mechanism for accountability and, worst of all, no trace of the specialist advice that it takes.
A recent celebrated case was the film "Crash", which portrays people getting sexual gratification from the most violent and dangerous motor crashes. It is especially worrying at a time and in a country where more children are killed each month than were killed in the Dunblane incident and where cars are more readily available than firearms—a subject on which the House has expended much time and energy. When asked to justify his decision to allow the film to be shown in Britain's cinemas, James Ferman, the director of the British Board of Film Classification, said that he had done so because he had taken specialist advice from a child psychologist who said that the film was safe. I argued with him on television and heard him repeat those claims.
Fortunately, the psychologist in question was very brave. I hope that it will enhance his standing in the profession that he chose to break confidentiality and blow the whistle, and release the full 12-page text of the report that he submitted. May I quote from it briefly? It said: Younger people, and those … who are particularly impressionable, are much more likely to be influenced by the moral vacuum associated with the sexuality shown by the main characters. … inexperienced people may look to the main characters as role models. In addition, there exists in any community a small group of disturbed, psychologically vulnerable or deviant individuals. But the main characters—… the Photographer, who pursues his 'art' in this film to the destruction of self and … others—could be seen as an inspiration or role model for these people to emulate. A professional psychologist has therefore said that the film could encourage certain irresponsible young people to go out and kill people by driving dangerously. We would know none of that had Mr. Brittan not had the courage to blow the whistle on Mr. Ferman.
I wish to make a wider point rather than simply challenge that film. There is something profoundly wrong with a set-up in which an extraordinarily influential and powerful body can conduct its affairs in such secrecy.
773 Furthermore, the lack of a proper register of interests means that we cannot even be certain that none of the board members have commercial connections with films that come before them. The redoubtable Steve Doughty of the Daily Mail, whom I congratulate on his investigative journalism on this matter, unearthed the fact that one board member, who is supposed to review films in our interests, helps to run an escort agency that specialises in the entrapment of parties to divorces.
There should be a full register of interests, and the board should be moved towards the BBC model. Nobody wants the Government or Parliament to censor films, but we need a proper non-executive committee, the members of which would be appointed and potentially fired by the Home Secretary. That system works in the case of the BBC and provides accountability to Parliament, without allowing direct interference in operations.
Since the beginning of civilisation, it has been accepted that what people, especially young people, see and hear, influences them. Pythagoras testifies to the occasion when he prevented a riot by persuading a piper to change his tune—or so the story goes. I do not ask that we impose some new system of censorship; I simply say that in an era when commercial advertisers can spend billions of pounds trying to change people's opinions—rightly so, as part of the workings of the market—we should get the existing machinery to work. That is the Bill's aim.
We owe it to the weak, the innocent and the vulnerable in our society to protect them. Making the board, which had a long and honourable history until recent years, work and clean up its act is in the public interest. I urge the House to support this measure.

§ Mr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Inverclyde)
I object in principle to the Bill, but I promise to be brief. I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and I support his aim to protect vulnerable people in our society, but I object in principle to the Bill because, in my view, its covert aim is to impose a form of state or political censorship on British filmgoers.
Although I have every respect for the Secretary of State for the Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and for the Secretary of State for Scotland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (Mr. Dewar), I do not want to see them as film censors. I reckon that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—I hope that he will forgive me for this—confines his film viewing to old Hollywood musicals. I sometimes think that he sees himself in his dreams as playing the role of Gene Kelly in a British remake of "Singin' in the Rain". Heaven alone knows when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland last visited his local cinema—I am not sure that he even saw "Braveheart".
The British film board works well. Its members, under the stewardship of Lord Harewood, are not devotees of pornography or violent films. Perhaps unlike the hon. 774 Member for Canterbury, I have not seen the film "Crash" and I have no desire to see it. [Interruption.] I understood from the way that the hon. Gentleman was speaking that he had seen the film.
The members of the British film board make the occasional mistake, but those are honest mistakes. I have more trust in the members of the board than I do in politicians.
My trust in the board is shared by members of my local council, the Inverclyde council. When a cinema was built on the Greenock waterfront, the members of the council, including the opposition members, decided that they had no wish to act as local censors as a condition for the granting of a licence to the cinema proprietor. They say that they are perfectly willing to rely on the British Board of Film Classification for advice on such matters. Among those local representatives are members of the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church. They are regular churchgoers, but—unlike the hon. Gentleman—they have trust in the men and women of the British film board.
I have always supported the statutory powers given to the board to license videos. That is particularly important where children are concerned. Indeed, I supported Gareth Wardell's Bill in the House as far back as 1984. Gareth earned our trust and respect for his Video Recordings Bill, which became the Video Recordings Act 1984. That Bill was strengthened by sections of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which I supported.
On films, we should put our trust in the members—

§ Mr. Brazier
rose—

§ Mr. Godman
The hon. Gentleman must learn the procedures of the House. I cannot give way to him.
We should put our trust in the members and officials of the British Board of Film Classification, not in politicians.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Julian Brazier, Sir Teddy Taylor, Mr. Andrew Rowe, Mr. Edward Leigh, Miss Ann Widdecombe, Mr. Roger Gale, Mr. Andrew Robathan, Mr. Piers Merchant, Dr. Julian Lewis, Mr. Shaun Woodward, Mr. Oliver Letwin and Mr. Christopher Fraser.