Video Recordings Bill (Allocation of Time)

Indeed, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because when he made that very point earlier, I looked at the briefing and intervened on him. He is absolutely right. The other point, which has not been touched on so far, is that as I understand it—from the same, excellent brief from the BBFC—a number of councils and their trading standards officers are being pursued through the courts for carrying out what they thought in good faith were statutory obligations under the VRA. Clearly they were wrong: if the VRA was not in force and they were seeking to prosecute people for breaches of a non-existent Act, one can understand that those people might be aggrieved and seek redress from them. My question for the Minister, therefore, is, what assistance are the Government providing to local authorities in that position? The third point that has already been touched on—again, by the Minister and others—is about the large and growing number of examples of places around the country where breaches, as they would have been if the law had been in force, of the VRA are taking place. The Minister cited Bournemouth, Conwy and Milton Keynes, while the hon. Member for Wantage referred to a number of other places. In Cheltenham, for example, law enforcement officers cannot pursue a newsagent selling R18 and unrated porn DVDs that are displayed above an ice cream display cabinet. In Manchester, trading standards officers have dropped three VRA cases involving 3,000 videos. However, there are two examples that I want to draw to the Minister's attention in particular. The first is from Powys, where trading standards officers are unable to pursue seven cases of under-age video games sales. The other example is from Brent, where trading standards officers are unable to prosecute three high street stores for selling age-restricted video games to children. In both cases, as the right hon. Gentleman said, we are particularly concerned about the sale of inappropriate material to under-age young people. Where those prosecutions have been dropped, I wonder whether the Department has taken note of its own explanatory notes, which point out that, even with the 1984 Act no longer on the statute book, there are other bits of legislation, such as the Obscene Publications Act 1959, that in certain circumstances could be used in respect of the sale of material to under-age people. Being interested in that point, I looked at the equally excellent briefing produced by the Library. In paragraph 2.2 of that briefing, the Minister will find the following reference to how the 1959 Act might be used in such circumstances:""The 1959 Act proscribes the distribution, circulation, sale, the giving or loan of obscene material. A point to make here is that at least some successful prosecutions under the 1984 Act could well have been made under the 1959 Act: pornographic material that might be legally supplied to an adult could be obscene if given to a child."" The briefing then quotes the case law on that issue, but my question is, given that there are, and will continue to be, outstanding cases where prosecutions could not now be taken forward under the re-established VRA, will the Department seek to provide support to those local authorities concerned, to see whether they could use other bits of existing legislation on the statue book to help bring prosecutions against those who have sought to abuse the loophole created by the error made back in 1984? I made it clear—I repeat the point now—that the Minister is absolutely right to get the Bill on to the statute book as quickly as possible, in order to return the protection that the VRA brings and enable the BBFC and all the enforcement authorities to continue their excellent work to date. For that reason, we give the Minister our full support and hope that we get the Bill through quickly today.