Video Recordings Bill (Allocation of Time)

I concede your point, Mr. Speaker, but, yet again, you have torpedoed my next joke. Depressingly, I was going to cite the example of "Bridget Jones's Diary", a DVD that was, surprisingly, censored by the BBFC. I was going to make the joke that unless we pass this legislation rapidly, Richard Curtis might start putting out unsuitable DVDs, but I now I shall not. The BBFC works closely with law enforcement agencies by providing classification evidence to ensure successful prosecutions. That co-operation is necessarily on hold while the Video Recordings Act 1984 is unenforceable. There were several notable interventions in the Minister's opening remarks about the effect of the unenforceability of the Act on previous prosecutions, which fills me with concern. As far as I am aware, something like 2,600 prosecutions have been successfully carried out under the Act. He says that his Department has received legal advice that if people seek to overturn convictions they are unlikely to succeed, but I do not share his confidence. It appears to be based on legal advice that he and his Department have received that an appeal against conviction would be out of time. However, I assert to him that an individual seeking to overturn a previous conviction would not simply appeal against it—by definition, they would have been prosecuted under a unenforceable Act, so there would be nothing to appeal against. Instead, they would seek to set it aside. I am concerned about that. The House is not in the habit of passing retrospective legislation. The last Conservative Government passed one piece of retrospective legislation—the War Crimes Act 1991, which allowed people living in this country who were guilty of war crimes in the second world war to be prosecuted. It is not a habit that we want to get into, but I counsel the Minister that his legal advice appears to be extremely ropy. For example, if a person has been convicted under an unenforceable Act—we concede that the 1984 Act is unenforceable—what do they do about their Criminal Records Bureau file? A CRB check on someone could show that they had been convicted under the Act, but they might want to get rid of that and apply to have the conviction set aside. Is it appropriate that the CRB should put convictions under the Act on people's files? That concerns me. I would also be interested to know what the legal advice on compensation is. Of course, if people seek to set aside their convictions, that is one thing, but seeking compensation from the Government is quite another. What advice has the Minister received about what compensation might be available to people who seek to set aside those convictions? My hope—I do not have the necessary expertise in such matters—is that compensation would be de minimis if it was given at all. The key point that the Minister tried to get across in his speech, and which we support him on, is that the 1984 Act is very much a live Act: it works and it is effective. Unlike many of the Acts and Bills that we debate in the House—one thinks of the Fiscal Responsibility Bill, which we debated yesterday—the Act has a real impact on consumers every day. He cited the opinion polls that show that 71 per cent. of people make use of classifications under the Act. There is mandatory labelling on the front and back of cases and any other surface of 5 cm or more, and videos must carry the BBFC age rating in words in a prominent position and in a specific size. In the case of box sets that contain differently rated works in one package, the classification of the highest-rated work must be printed on the outer packaging. The vast majority of video distributors include consumer advice to provide additional detail about a work's rating to enable parents to make an informed choice about their children's video viewing, so the ratings empower the consumer, particularly parents.