UK Parliament Watch

And are reported to parliament

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Keith Vaz: Mr. Abder Razak Filali-Tomouh is a British citizen who went abroad for a weekend trip to the continent. He came back with the legal limit of tobacco in his car, with his whole family. There was no question of his being above the limit provided for by the Treasury and mentioned by the Customs and Excise people. He was within the limit, but he was stopped on his arrival and asked why he had brought that amount of tobacco in. He explained that it was for his use and that of his family for the foreseeable future. Having committed no crime, he found that the contents were impounded and that, worse for him, so was his car—the car in which he had driven to and from the country. He came back and lost everything, but no criminal offence was committed.

My constituent has not admitted to doing anything wrong and no evidence has been found that he has done anything wrong. He just had a lot of tobacco with him, but within the legal limit. This gentleman has lost his car and can no longer go about his normal business in Leicester. No real explanation has been given for what has happened, which, as I found out from a letter from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, is standard practice—that is, that HM Revenue and Customs has the power to take people's cars away from them, even though no offence has been committed. That is draconian and bizarre. There ought to be a right of appeal, allowing people the opportunity to challenge the decision.

My constituent cannot afford legal representation—as we know, the Government have cut legal aid over the past few years for people in same position as my constituent—so his only recourse is to come to his Member of Parliament. I have written on his behalf, I have received a standard reply from the Exchequer Secretary and apparently that is the end of the matter—he cannot do anything to get his car back. We need to look at the situation, which would never have come to my attention but for my constituent coming to me at my ordinary weekly surgery, because I do not regard myself as an expert in such matters.

Please let us look at the law, and in particular at people's rights of appeal in such circumstances, especially for citizens who are not experts in that area of law and who become totally bewildered when one day they have a car to drive and the next they do not, and there seems to have been no court process in between. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will give me some reassurance that at the very least that case will be examined again and that at most we will examine the law to see whether we can exercise rights of appeal.

   
Providing a censorship service

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Siân C. James (Swansea, East) (Lab) : What work she is undertaking with internet service providers to ensure that they take a responsible approach to the contents they host.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jacqui Smith) : The Government continue to work with the internet industry to ensure that inappropriate material is not hosted in the UK and that there is a greater understanding of and clarity about when criminal offences have been committed on the internet.

As part of that approach, there is ongoing co-operation between internet service providers and law enforcement agencies. Most service providers have acceptable use policies in place that enable the removal of material from any site if it is illegal, distasteful or otherwise unacceptable.

Siân C. James : I thank the Home Secretary for her answer and congratulate her on her new role.

Given the huge increase in videos that depict scenes of violence, antisocial behaviour and criminal behaviour, which are being uploaded on to such internet services, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is time for the police to have more powers when dealing with internet service providers who persist in the glorification of such acts?

Jacqui Smith : It is clearly unacceptable for such criminal acts to have been committed in the first place and then uploaded on to the sorts of sites that my hon. Friend mentioned. We need to look at the matter in two stages. First, criminal law already covers the first offence of the attack—whether it is assault, wounding, actual or grievous bodily harm or antisocial behaviour, which my hon. Friend mentioned.

Secondly, someone who records a violent offence could be criminally liable for uploading it either because they have committed the offence being filmed or because they were involved in planning it and would therefore be open to charges of conspiracy, incitement, aiding and abetting or being involved in a joint enterprise to commit the offence.

Uploading the video as well as taking part in the offence could be an aggravating factor when sentencing is considered. It is important to keep the matter under review and my hon. Friend has put her finger on something that concerns many people. However, the law is in place and we need to continue working with the police and internet service providers to ensure that we limit that unacceptable activity.

Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con) : The Home Secretary will know that paedophiles regularly download some appalling child abuse videos and films on to their computers. Increasingly, they are encrypting the material so that the police cannot get access to it. The police have been waiting about five years for the statutory instrument relating to encryption and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. When will they get it?

Jacqui Smith: I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a strong interest in the matter. Since coming into the Home Office, I have been impressed by the work of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the work that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) is leading. I understand that we are looking at that specific matter to bring it forward. I hope that we can get back to the hon. Gentleman with news on that soon.

Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East) (Lab): May I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to a substantial piece of work that Zentek Forensics in my constituency carried out? It showed that it is ever so easy to google one’s way around the firewalls that prevent children from accessing some very undesirable material. That is happening in schools, libraries and children’s bedrooms in the evenings at home. Will my right hon. Friend look at the providers of commercial filters and try to get them to strengthen their firewalls?

Jacqui Smith: I am happy to look at anything we can do to protect children from some of the dangers of the internet. I recognise, of course, that the internet plays an important role in the lives of children and young people—at their schools, in their social lives and in their ability to research. However, it is clearly unacceptable if we cannot put the technical safeguards in place. We have been considering how we can, for example, kitemark some of the products that are involved in filtering and monitoring software. Perhaps, as part of that activity, the company to which my hon. Friend referred could make some progress. However, we take the issue extremely seriously.

Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): Although I welcome the Home Secretary’s comments, does she agree that it is a tragedy that what used to be the place where childhood innocence was protected and preserved—the home—is now often the place where it is corrupted and destroyed?

Jacqui Smith: If that were the sole impact of the internet and some of the new methods of communication, I would agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, as the parent of a teenager, I have had my eyes opened and been amazed by the scope for friends to communicate with each another and talk to each other through sites like Bebo. Sometimes I wish that they would talk face to face; nevertheless, important elements of social networking take place through such sites. We need to put in place the technical safeguards necessary to educate parents and children about how to use them safely. That is an important part of CEOP’s work. I know that work is going on to consider especially those social networking sites. We will soon produce guidance on the technical matters and the way in which we can better advise parents, who need to take responsibility for what their children do in the home.

Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on her new role. Will she join me in paying tribute to Liz Longhurst, who has campaigned tirelessly since the horrific murder of her daughter, Jane, for the outlawing of extreme images of violent internet pornography, which will be made illegal in the recently published Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill? Will my right hon. Friend tell the House when that welcome measure is likely to receive its Second Reading?

Jacqui Smith: I think that the legislation to which my hon. Friend refers is due to receive its Second Reading in the autumn. He is right that the campaigning of Liz Longhurst, ably supported and championed by him, has brought the issue to the fore and applied the necessary pressure to bring about those legislative changes, which will be important in offering protection in this area.

   
Sexual violence reduced due to availability of Internet porn

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Professor Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering, University of Cambridge, and Chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research gave evidence to a Home Affairs Committee:

The evidence that we have now ten years later, the most recent study of the correlation, for example, between crime and Internet adoption across the 50 US states, is interesting. It shows that, by and large, the Internet has a positive effect or a beneficial effect in that it reduces some crimes, crimes of sexual violence and crimes of prostitution, which are assumed to be linked with the increasing availability of pornography to young males.

The only crime that has gone up are what the FBI class as 'runaways', that is, children leaving home without their parents' consent before age 18, and some cases of runaways are clearly tragic and others are clearly beneficial to the child and we have no further figures on that.

The things that we were worried about ten years ago and the things that have happened ten years after that were different, so we have to be cautious when we gaze into the future.

   
UK Government to re-examine violent games

F rom GamesIndustry.biz

Keith Vaz raised the issue of Manhunt 2 being banned by the BBFC in Parliamentary questions this week, as well as the withdrawal of PC title Law and Order: Double or Nothing, which contained an image of murdered toddler James Bulger: Will the Leader of the House please tell us when he expects a statement to be made... or when we may have a debate on the social responsibilities of those who make a huge amount of money out of these videogames?

Jack Straw admitted the BBFC falls under his responsibility, and that violence in games is a subject that is likely to be further examined by the UK Government.

We do not see sufficient social responsibility and understanding by the creators and purveyors of such games, commented Straw.

   
Nutter MPs congratulate the BBFC

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EDM 1744:  BANNING OF VIDEO GAME BY THE BRITISH BOARD OF FILM CLASSIFICATION

Keith Vaz
Mike Penning
Peter Bottomley
Mr Mike Hancock
Mr Robert N. Wareing
Ann Winterton
Mark Lazarowicz

That this House welcomes the decision by the British Board of Film Classification to ban the game Manhunt 2 from being sold in the UK; further welcomes the decision to withdraw from sale another video game which used footage of the abduction of James Bulger; believes that games depicting extreme, realistic and graphic violence can damage the social development of children and young adults; and further believes video games companies should better recognise their social responsibilities when they design a new game.

   
Nutter Vaz has another Manhunt whinge in parliament

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Keith Vaz: I have raised my second point, which is about video games, on many occasions in the House. Since we last had such a debate, I am delighted that the British Board of Film Classification has banned Manhunt 2 , the sequel to Manhunt 1 , which was produced a few years ago and caused so much controversy. According to Giselle Pakeerah, the mother of Stefan Pakeerah, the young Leicester boy who was stabbed to death in a park in Leicester when aged only 14, the 17-year-old killer copied exactly scenes from Manhunt 1 to lure Stefan into the park and stab him 17 or 18 times with a knife.

Manhunt 2 is even worse because it shows graphic scenes of violence, including people being syringed in the eyes and bludgeoned to death. I was delighted when the BBFC decided to ban it. However, having banned the first video game in 10 years, it is important that the Government react much more proactively. I know that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is the mother of a young child. My children are 12 and 10 and I cannot supervise them every moment of the day. I see them at their computers—obviously, since I became interested in the subject, I check what they are doing there. However, peer groups of which young children are a part may result in their watching videos that are inappropriate for their age because they have access to those games.

A partnership between the retailers, the producers of the video games and the Government is therefore important to ensure, first, that labelling is clear. It is still about the size of a 10p piece, which is far too small. The content of some games is so serious that a warning should be splashed on the bottom that clearly states the age limit so that those games will not pass the retailers who sometimes sell them because inexperienced people operate cash registers and do not know that they should not sell them to someone who is under 18. Such labelling also means that, if such a game is lying around a house, people can see that it is inappropriate.

I welcome what the Government have done and the statement that Tony Blair made just before he resigned as Prime Minister. He said that there is a wider social responsibility, beyond the notion that the publishers should be able to make profits out of such games. A huge amount of money is made out of the production of such games, for which we have become the centre of Europe, but there is a wider social responsibility, too. I therefore hope very much that something can be done to ensure additional research. The Government can do that immediately, without having to wait for the publishers, although they ought to contribute towards the cost of the research.

   
Can smoking on TV encourage smoking?

From Hansard

Martin Horwood : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent assessment her Department has made of the impact of people smoking on television and in films on young people's decision on whether or not to start smoking?

What steps her Department is taking to ensure that smoking is not encouraged by its depiction in television programmes and films?

Caroline Flint : The Department has not made a recent assessment of the impact of people smoking on television and in films on young people's decision on whether or not to start smoking.

The Office of Communications code covers the portrayal of smoking in television programmes. This code specifically requires that the portrayal of smoking should not be featured in children's programmes, and included only when there is a strong editorial case for inclusion. In other programmes likely to be widely seen by young people, smoking should be included only where context or dramatic veracity requires it. In such programmes, smoking should not be prominently featured as a normal and attractive activity.

In films, the independent British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) undertook a public consultation exercise to update its guidelines on granting classifications for films which can be seen by children. The public expressed some concern at the depiction of smoking in films. The BBFC issued updated guidelines in 2005, which included the following:

No work taken as a whole may promote or encourage the use of illegal drugs. Any detailed portrayal of drug use likely to promote or glamorise the activity may be cut. Works which promote or glamorise smoking, alcohol abuse or substance misuse may also be a concern, particularly at the junior categories.

The BBFC apply these guidelines to cinema films, as well as videos and computer games.

   
Government plan to increase regulation

From Hansard

Mrs. Riordan : To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Government plan to increase the regulation of websites based in the UK.

Margaret Hodge : I have been asked to reply.

I refer to the answer of 2 February 2006, Official Report, column 599W, given by the Minister for State for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality. At the national level, there are no plans to increase regulation in this area. Creation and use of websites is not a regulated activity. However, arrangements are in place under the Electronic Commerce Regulations to enable internet service providers in the UK to take down inappropriate content when they are notified of its existence. Activities conducted through websites are subject to the general law in the same way as any other offline activity.

All published material including violent pornography, is subject to the Obscene Publication Act 1959, which makes illegal the publication of an article whose effect, taken as a whole, is to tend to deprave and corrupt those likely to read, see or hear it. Responsibility for the prevention of the physical importation of obscene material lies with HM Revenue and Customs under the terms of the Customs Consolidation Act 1876 and section 170(2) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979.

The Obscene Publication Act applies equally to material published over the internet, though the overwhelming majority of obscene material published on the internet originates abroad and beyond our jurisdiction. This raises a challenge to our controls on obscene material. The Government are therefore proposing to make illegal the possession of a limited category of extreme pornographic material in measures to be introduced in the forthcoming Criminal Justice Bill.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) supported by the UK industry and the European Union works to minimise the availability of illegal internet content particularly child abuse images by means of a telephone hotline to report incidences of potentially illegal content on websites. Reports are passed on to the relevant authorities for action. Since 1996 the amount of potentially illegal content hosted in the UK has declined from 18 per cent. to less than 1 per cent. The work of the IWF is an example of responsible self-regulation by the UK internet industry.

   
SWAP have their day in Committee

From the BBC

Independent 'expert' Ray Wyre, who has a history of working with sex offenders, highlighted websites about bestiality, necrophilia and incitement to rape.

He said the situation with many obscene internet sites was heading out of control and he raised concerns about a failure by legislators to intervene.

The Equal Opportunities Committee of the Scottish parliament was discussing the impact of pornography.

Wyre compared laws prohibiting incitement to racial hatred with the relative lack of regulation on the internet. He said: We can have everything from incitement to abuse, incitement to rape women, incitement to have sex with children and we do nothing about it. The young people know what sites to go to, behind their parents back and we do nothing about it. They are talking about it in playgrounds and yet it isn't even part of this debate as we wouldn't necessarily class it as pornography.

Dr Karen Boyle, of Glasgow University, told the committee that youngsters could learn about pornography as part of sex education at schools to leave them more informed on the issue." It's a mistake to assume that censorship is the only way of dealing with this. There are social policy implications that we can consider.

The discussion followed a petition from Scottish Women Against Pornography calling for porn to be made a hate crime.

Last year, MSP Elaine Smith had called for the petition to be dismissed. The committee agreed with the Labour MSP but backed an evidence session, allowing experts to put forward their views on the issue.

Avedon Carol, of Feminists Against Censorship, argued against a ban, claiming the link to sexual violence was not proven.

   
ie Europe muscling into Internet TV

From the BBC

An EU bid to make internet broadcasters subject to the same laws as traditional television is "seriously misguided", a House of Lords committee has said.

Proposals risk damaging the new media industry, pushing broadcasters to set up outside Europe, the committee said.

The committee was discussing European Commission plans to update the 1989 TV without Frontiers EU directive. The Audiovisual Media Services Directive aims to reflect huge changes in broadcasting in recent years.

It has proved controversial as the EU attempts to increase regulation of video content on the internet, and create a "level playing field" between traditional TV-based and online broadcasts. The EC argues that new broadcasters are effectively competing for viewers and advertising and should be subject to the same rules.

But the all-party Lords European Union Committee rejected this, saying it was not the role of regulation to protect established broadcasters from new competition operating under different business models.

Committee chairman Lord Freeman said: We believe that this attempt was seriously misguided and any future efforts to do the same would be in grave error. Such an attempt risks damaging the new media industry, which is a vibrant and important sector of the UK's economy.

The committee said enforcing the new directive would be difficult, as the pace of change in new media was so quick the definition of services covered may not offer enough legal certainty.

There was also particular concern about attempts to water down the "country of origin principle", which allows broadcasters to offer pan-European services, while complying with the laws of the country they are based in.

Lord Freeman added: Most of our concerns on the proposed directive rest on whether the country of origin principle, which we see as essential to the proper operation of single market legislation, will be maintained. We are firmly convinced that it should be.

   
Extending the sex offenders register

From Hansard , thanks to UKRudeGirl
See committee minutes for details of the parliamentary discussion

A Commons committee, The First Delegated Legislation Committee, discussed the proposed extension of the sex offenders register on January 29th.

The Crimes being added to the list of crimes liable to registration are:

* outraging public decency
* theft (eg underwear theft as eported by the press)
* burglary with intent to steal, inflict grievous bodily harm or do unlawful damage
* child abduction
* harassment
* sending prohibited articles by post
* improper use of public electronic communications network

It is at the discretion of the police to apply to the courts for a Sexual Offence Prevention Order, which results in the offender being placed on the sex offenders register. This is normally done if police believe the person might commit another sex-related crime.

The committee were a little self congratulatory about protecting children but seemed to give little consideration to the possibility for abuse via vindictive or inappropriate use of the new law.

If accepted the order will be fast tracked into law within 2 weeks.