Video Recordings Bill (Allocation of Time)

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The 1984 Act has been effective in dealing with under-age sales, and it is a vital tool in helping to ensure that children and young people do not gain access to products that are harmful and detrimental to their safety and welfare. Picking up the point made by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), it is interesting to note that in the past two years, more than 200 cases of under-age sales have been prosecuted. That is an example of how the Act is working, and in particular of how it is being implemented to protect children. We often talk about protecting children in the abstract, but the Act is a real, live example. The Act helps to deal with unofficial and counterfeit goods, and it is used to prevent supplies of counterfeit or pirate works and as a means of detecting unclassified works. It is therefore effective against unofficial products being put into circulation, and therefore helps to protect legitimate businesses from unscrupulous trading. The BBFC frequently gives evidence to the Federation Against Copyright Theft and the Trading Standards Institute on whether a seized work has been classified by it for distribution in the UK. Even if traders of pirated products are not prosecuted on behalf of rights owners for conspiracy to defraud, or for copyright or trade mark infringement, actions can still be taken for illegally supplying an unclassified work or a classified work to an under-age person. The Act helps to deal with the problem of parallel imports of video works from other countries. Those are normally in breach of it because they have not been classified or labelled for UK distribution. That is extremely useful to UK retailers and distributors who have acquired licences for sale in the UK and who wish to protect their businesses from unlicensed imports. The point again is that often, prosecutions are the tip of the iceberg. The fact is that people who seek to import videos and distribute them illegally in this country are put off by the provisions of the Act. The Act can be a gateway to the discovery of other serious offences. Often, investigations that begin with a breach of the Act unearth other criminality such as obscene images, the proceeds of crime or illegitimate business dealings. It can therefore help to uncover unscrupulous businesses. As the Minister indicated, although the Act remains unenforceable, it is heartening that legitimate makers of videos continue to comply with its provisions. Responsible members of the home entertainment industry, which includes distributors belonging to the British Video Association and games publishers, have continued to submit their works to the BBFC for classification. However, the BBFC is concerned that others are not doing so.