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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for not putting my name to Amendments Nos. 13 and 15 in time. My opposition to these clauses is undiminished. I listened carefully to the reply that my noble friend Lord Hunt made in the debate on Report. He spoke with great passion and sincerity, and I admire him for that, but unfortunately the quality of his arguments did not match up to the passion and sincerity with which he made them. This is fundamentally about an intrusion in the harmless private lives of ordinary citizens in this country. On Report, I spoke about the Video Recordings Act 1984. I did not repeat one of the juiciest pieces about it. Until that time, we had a British Board of Film Censors, which was not a censorship board. It classified films, and if it refused to classify them, they could still be shown with the permission of local authorities. The Video Recordings Act 1984 changed the board from being a classification board to being a censorship board because if a video recording was not approved by the board, it could not be shown at all. From being a classification board, it became a censorship board, but its name changed from being a censorship board to a classification board. George Orwell would have been proud. I am enthusiastic about Amendment No. 13 because it seeks to get round the horrible situation which the Government are putting us in by adding an extra gloss to the Obscene Publications Act 1959. I would support the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, if she chose to divide on that. I am less enthusiastic about Amendment No. 15, not because it is not right in itself, but because I simply do not believe that any jury will convict a citizen of this country for possessing what it is not illegal to produce. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, gave the reason of needing inspectors with the right of entry to people’s homes, sitting rooms, bedrooms, video machines and DVDs. Is that really what the Government are proposing? There is no other way of enforcing it. If they succeed in doing it, however they succeed in doing it, what jury is going to convict people for possessing what it is not illegal to produce? The Government, despite all the sincerity of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have failed to answer any of these arguments.