Video Recordings Bill (Allocation of Time)

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey). I congratulate him on his maiden Second Reading speech from the Front Bench. It was fascinating and I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you were not present for the whole contribution. I feel—and I am sure the House feels—that we know so much more about the hon. Gentleman, especially his encyclopaedic knowledge of all the films and videos that have been produced in the past 25 years. It must be a Minister's worst nightmare to arrive at his desk in Whitehall to be told by civil servants that an important Act is effectively illegal. An Act is an Act, as the Minister has said, but the news in respect of this Act was that it had not passed through the necessary European legislation hoops and that therefore the prosecutions under it of the past 26 years were, in effect, invalid. I do not know whether the Minister who is present was the Minister who was told that news, but if so, I would love to have been in his office as he received the advice. I must commend him, however, as I think he has dealt with this situation in an extremely calm and cool manner throughout, from how he responded to the first announcements just before Christmas to the way in which he has presented the Bill to the House. It is right for the Government to use this special method to try to get the legislation through the House, because the worst possible thing to do on discovering that an Act of Parliament is not, in fact, enforceable would be to allow that Act to remain on the statute book and individuals and companies to be prosecuted, and then to try to work out at a later stage exactly what to do about that very unfortunate circumstance. The Minister has given us an assurance that the Government have brought the matter before the House as best they could in the circumstances. We will therefore deal with all the Bill's stages this afternoon, and, judging by the number of Members attending this debate, we should deal with them speedily. By doing so, we might provide more time for discussion of the Digital Economy Bill, as the hon. Member for Wantage said. In common with every other Member who has spoken thus far, I of course agree that we need to correct the error made 26 years ago, and I commend the Minister on not seeking to make party political points about why it occurred, as this could have happened to any Minister. We do not expect Ministers to have encyclopaedic knowledge of how the European Union works. Ministers operate in accordance with the advice given to them, and clearly over the past 26 years advice was given to Ministers suggesting that the legislation was fully in keeping with European law and was therefore enforceable. I hope that when the Minister sums up he will tell us in greater detail precisely what will happen to those who have been prosecuted; he alluded to that during the discussion of the allocation of time motion. The question of compensation has been mentioned, and when this was announced I received a telephone call from the home affairs editor of The Times telling me what had happened. There is genuine concern among those who have been prosecuted over the past 26 years as to whether their convictions were valid, whether the sums paid in fines will have to be repaid to them and whether they might be re-prosecuted as a result of the new legislation. I am sure that it will not be retrospective legislation. We cannot say that everybody who has been prosecuted under the 1984 Act will have to be re-prosecuted—we do not know. It is extremely important that there is clarity on such issues if the House is to give the Government the benefit of the doubt and allow them to pass the Bill in the space of one day—or a few hours, in fact. Let us be clear about what we wish to know. Will those who have been prosecuted be entitled to compensation, and if so, how much will they get? Will they be re-prosecuted? Do their convictions still stand, or are they expunged? What is the precise legal nature of this situation? I am sure that the Minister will have sought the advice of the Attorney-General and that she will have been very clear about where the Government stand in respect of an Act of Parliament that is found to be unenforceable. When the Minister sums up, I hope that he will tell us the answers to those questions. My second point is about the general debate concerning video games. I am keen not to stray beyond the measures of the Video Recordings Act 1984, but there were some very interesting comments from the Front Benches about their commitment to ensuring that the thriving and innovative video games industry in the United Kingdom, and particularly in London, survives. I am not against what is being proposed, and I have never been in favour of censorship; I have always been very clear that those who are aged 18-plus should be able to buy and watch whatever video games they want. Those who are not sufficiently old should not be able to do so, however, and those retailers who are prosecuted under this Act must be dealt with very severely indeed. I say that because I disagree with the hon. Member for Wantage, in that I do not believe that watching a film is the same as participating in a video game. I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have very young grandchildren, and I have children aged 14 and 12. A huge amount of research has been done on the issue, and it has been found that a half of all eight to 11-year-olds use the internet without adult supervision. I do not know how many Members present have children or grandchildren aged between eight and 11, but it is a real worry that a half of those in that age group are not supervised by adults when using the internet. Some parents take the home computer out of their children's rooms and put it in a room where everyone has access to it so that they can watch over what their children are doing online. Parents have different ways of dealing with that issue, but the fact is that watching a violent film is different from participating in a video game. If a young person gets hold of "Modern Warfare 2", for example, they will be asked to participate in a terrorist attack; they will be asked to shoot at civilians in Moscow airport as part of the game. That is why the Russian Government have banned "Modern Warfare 2"; they felt that in an age when we are trying to educate our children about the need to understand the dangers of extreme violence, we should not place in their hands, under the guise of entertainment, games that allow them to act in a violent way. I am grateful to the Minister for what he said about the Digital Economy Bill coming before this House soon, and it is always the hope of Ministers that such Bills will come to the House from the other place quickly, but I have counted that we have just 35 working days from now until 31 March. Nobody knows when the next general election will be held, of course, but there are only 35 complete working days in which legislation can be addressed in this House.