Orders of the Day — Pornography

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:06 am on 9 July 1992.

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Photo of Mr Michael Stephen Mr Michael Stephen , Shoreham 6:06, 9 July 1992

I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

In the meantime, I urge the Government to use section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959, which enables a constable to apply to a magistrate for a warrant to search premises and seize material which he has reasonable grounds to believe to be contrary to that Act. He must bring that material before a magistrate, and the magistrate can then decide whether it is contrary to the Act, and, if so satisfied, order that it be forfeited.

In that way, one will avoid two problems which one encounters using section 2 of the Act to prosecute a person. First, the question whether the material is or is not obscene has to be decided according to the civil standard —on the balance of probabilities—not the criminal standard—beyond reasonable doubt. Secondly, juries are not involved. These two factors of the difficulty of proving to the criminal standard and of satisfying juries make prosecutions under the 1959 Act so difficult.

I tabled a parliamentary question to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General about the matter. He said that he did not think it appropriate to use section 3 of the Act against the book to which early-day motion 312 refers. I cannot understand that. Taking essentially civil proceedings to confiscate pornographic literature is a different matter from taking criminal proceedings to impose criminal penalties on a person or company.

The difficulty with seizing pornographic material under section 3 is logistic. The police would have to bring in many tonnes of the material. I suggest that private contractors could be used, as they are used for wheel clamping and the management of prisons. We need a company which knows the printing, publishing and distribution industry, will know where to go to find the material and could bring the material before magistrates and secure orders for confiscation. The intervention of the constable would be necessary only for the execution of the warrant.

If the material is found to be pornographic, the court should order the pornographer to pay the costs of the private contractor in confiscating the material. There should also be no question of the pornographer being able to claim tax relief in respect of the expenditure that he incurred to print, store or do anything else with the pornographic material.

I will not go into the European dimension, except to say that pornography is so readily available in Germany, Holland and other parts of the continent that it is vital to do what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in the House a short while ago he intended do and make sure that our own border controls are maintained.

I am grateful to the House for listening to me. I should like to conclude with two short quotations. The first is from The Guardian of 8 May 1990, from a man who was introduced to pornography in the 1960s and has since become a reformed character: Some three years on from my decision, I cannot deny that I am still sometimes attracted to pornography. But mostly, I now feel that it is not only unappealing to me but also degrading and dangerous to women. I no longer feel shame or guilt about having used it, although I do feel sad and angry at how it has affected me. The second quotation is from the sermon which the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered to us all at St. Margaret's church on the occasion of the opening of this, my first Parliament. He said: I ask for recognition that the sense of shared values, so vital to long-term wellbeing, derives from our Christian heritage; I ask that we should not be ashamed to declare our loyalty to Christ in this nation. If we do so, I believe that we will acknowledge that human life, and hence the ordering of society through Parliamentary Law, has a religious and spiritual dimension which is a source of hope.