The three speeches/headings immediately before

1. 1 earlier: Keith Vaz

   Perhaps they have gone to fix their broadband internet as a result of the digital economy Bill. I welcome that Bill because it will implement, in full, the recommendations of Tanya Byron's review, which was set up by the Prime Minister. She produced a very good report last year about video games. It is important that we do our best to ensure that the House has a say in how the video games industry operates. I am treading on people's toes in saying that, and when I go back to my office, I will have received many e-mails from video games players who believe that I am in favour of banning such games or preventing those under the age of 18 from purchasing and playing them-I am not, and that was also not Tanya Byron's recommendation.

   What we were concerned with, and what the House should be concerned with, is video games that are intended for adults falling into the hands of children and young people. There are four elements to this partnership, and I hope that all the recommendations will be included in the Bill. The first element is the responsibility of parents to ask their children-or indeed their grandchildren-what video games they are playing and whether they are intended for their age group.

   The second element is the responsibility on the Government to ensure that the video games industry packages the games properly, so that it states clearly on the label where a game is "18-plus". I got someone in my office to buy the new video game, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2", and the 18 sign on it remains only the size of a £1 coin. The label is easily erased if somebody puts their thumb on it. In my view, retailers do not take much notice when someone buys a game, and ample evidence suggests that retailers are not being prosecuted if they sell 18-plus games to young people. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" is a classic example. It is a very dangerous and violent game if seen by under-18s. In fact, Russia has banned it today, although I am not suggesting for one moment that it should be banned in this country. Russia did so because it shows Russians as terrorists and recreates a scene at an airport in which civilians are gunned down by characters in the game.

   I welcome the digital economy Bill and hope that the Opposition will also support it when it is debated in the House, including on Second Reading. I am pleased that the Equality Bill will come back, because it is important that we continue to ensure that it is as strong as possible. We have made enormous progress-it has some very good clauses-and it would have been sad if the Bill had died at the end of the last Session. I am therefore pleased that it was re-contained in this year's Gracious Speech.

   I come now to the financial services Bill. I note that the right hon. Member for Wokingham has left the Chamber. I remind Members who have been here as long as I have that in 1995 the sixth-largest private bank in the world closed. It had assets of £6 billion, and almost every member of the Asian community in this country either had money in BCCI, knew someone who did or worked for the bank. The bank was allowed by the Bank of England to continue as it had been going, because the supervision of banks then rested with the Bank of England.

   As a direct result of BCCI's closure, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, set up the Bingham inquiry. Lord Justice Bingham, as he then was-he went on to become the Lord Chief Justice-produced a historic report that talked about the need to separate the supervision of banks from the Bank of England. The Government acted on that and created the Financial Services Authority. I am not suggesting that everything that the FSA has done has been correct. It needs to be tweaked-changes are needed and it needs to be reviewed and toughened up-and we welcome everything in the financial services Bill. However, I make a plea-the Government are with me on this-to the Opposition, including the Liberal Democrats, not to give the supervision of banks back to the Bank of England, which simply cannot carry out all its tasks. A separate organisation needs to supervise how licences are given out and banks are policed. That is why it is important that we support the financial services Bill. We should not attempt to hand back supervision to the Bank of England.

2. 2 earlier: Andrew MacKinlay

   Where are all the Scottish Members?

3. 3 earlier: Keith Vaz

   I agree with what my right hon. Friend says; it is very bad when those in positions of responsibility in another place try to frustrate the will of this House. Now that the Conservative leader in the other place has heard the Queen's Speech, I hope that he will reflect on the proposals put forward.

   Some good speeches have been made in this debate. The points that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe made about judicial control were important, because the House needs to examine that area. It is right to say that we have ceded a lot of powers to the judiciary. I am delighted to see the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills) on the Front Bench. I know that he is very busy, but he ought to read the speech made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, because it contained important points about the power that this House has as a sovereign House and the power that has been ceded to judges. I disagreed with him on one point, because I think that judges ought to come before hearings of the Select Committee on Justice to answer questions about their record-that would be a jolly good thing and I am not with him on that point. The scrutiny of the judiciary is important when appointments are just about to be made.

   The second speech that I thought was good was made by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean). He made such a passionate speech about rain forests that I think he ought to accompany the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to Copenhagen. The right hon. Gentleman made some important and useful points about the way in which the climate change debate was developing, and I commend him for what he said.

   I wish to discuss two or three of the Bills that were foreshadowed in the Gracious Speech. I am delighted that the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill has been carried over, because I hope that the House will thus have a better opportunity to debate its provisions. I am particularly interested in the very good suggestion made by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) for the appointment of temporary peers. Where Prime Ministers want those from outside to join Parliament to become part of the Government, they need not necessarily be life peers; they could be peers appointed for a temporary period. Such an approach would mean that more people would have the opportunity to serve in Parliament and we would get a more diverse House of Lords than we have at the moment. I hope that we will be able to debate that further when the Bill returns to the Floor of this House.

   I am very pleased with the digital economy Bill. Obviously we took the point made by Scottish Members that they cannot have access to the same extent of broadband network as England and Wales has-