Video Recordings Bill (Allocation of Time)

As I have just told my right hon. Friend, I took advice from my officials. By "my officials" I mean the legal officials in the DCMS. As I have said, their advice was very clear. They also made clear to me that they had taken plenty of legal advice from many different parts of the Government, and that, although there could not be certainty when there was no precedent, there was very little doubt. I am sorry, but I cannot tell my right hon. Friend whether the officials questioned the Attorney-General personally and specifically. I am not sure whether I have fully covered the question of appeals and compensation, but in the absence of further interventions, I shall proceed to answer the questions about the potential for insertion of what might be described as the PEGI clauses of the Digital Economy Bill, which introduce the PEGI European classification system for video games in this country into this Bill. One of the fundamental reasons why the House has considered the Bill, and why Opposition parties in both Houses have indicated that they consider it appropriate to fast-track it, is that we are not amending an existing piece of legislation which has been in force for 25 years. If the two main Opposition parties had come to us in advance and said "We think it important to include the PEGI clauses", we might have been able to discuss the matter, but I do not think that that happened. We needed to act swiftly, and, legitimately, to use the special fast-track procedure. Part of the reason for concertina-ing the House's usual precautionary procedures was that we were making no change whatsoever. The point is that we need to get the legislation repealed and revived so that it can be amended during the passage of the Digital Economy Bill.