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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their contributions to the debate. We emphasise that the Video Recordings Act already offers significant protection for children. It puts in place a system that makes it a criminal offence to sell or supply video works to children or young people if they contain content that is inappropriate for them. This system has worked well for 25 years. Parents and consumers can see clearly from the product what they are buying and whether the content is suitable for viewing by particular age groups. In addition to this important layer of statutory protection, there is a wealth of voluntary information available to parents and consumers if they want more detail on the storyline or underlying content. At the moment, the vast majority of DVDs and games rated by the British Board of Film Classification display not only the compulsory labelling that is required, such as the age ratings, but a few words of consumer advice that have been jointly agreed between the content publisher and the BBFC. The BBFC website also contains extended consumer advice, which parents can view to find out more about a particular film or television programme. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for having introduced the point that the Pan-European Games Information also offers consumer advice in the form of pictograms that indicate whether the video game contains scenes that feature, for example, drug use, violence or bad language. We do not think that there is compelling evidence to demonstrate that consumer advice offers a greater level of public protection or that this extra level of consumer advice needs to be made compulsory, which is the burden of the amendment. We have existing statutory protection and good practice that guarantee that the amendment is not necessary. We are keen to ensure that we do not create unnecessary legislation. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, made a nod in that direction but, as we have the necessary protection in place, why do we need an additional amendment to the Bill? The Secretary of State will issue guidance to the industry and the designated authorities to indicate that consumer advice should be available as a best practice standard. This standard is already widely adopted and delivered on the ground by a responsible and responsive industry in collaboration with the British Board of Film Classification and the Video Standards Council. The British Video Association has confirmed to the Government that it will continue to encourage its members to comply with best practice and has emphasised that there is already a very high compliance rate under the voluntary scheme. I recognise the good intentions of the noble Lord’s amendment and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for her comments on the matter. However, we think that we have in place good practice, with the necessary legislative framework to back it up, and that therefore the amendment is not necessary. I hope that the noble Lord will feel that I have given him sufficient reassurance to enable him to withdraw the amendment.