Digital Bill Extended To Cover NI

An important piece of Westminster legislation covering video recordings and the digital world is to extend to Northern Ireland.

The Stormont Arts Minister, the DUP's Nelson McCausland (pictured) has welcomed legislative consent being granted to the principle of extending the provisions of the UK Video Recordings Bill and the 'transferred matters' of the Digital Economy Bill to Northern Ireland.

Commenting on the legislation the Minister said: "The Video Recordings Bill is needed because it has recently come to light that offences under the Video Recording Act 1984 are currently unenforceable.

"The aim of the Video Recordings Bill is to rectify this situation," he explained.

"The Act requires that videos and DVDs etc and certain boxed video games would be classified by the British Board of Film Classification," the MLA continued.

It makes it illegal to supply unclassified material and to supply age-restricted material to people below the specified age rating. It also limits the distribution of adult films material.

"The extension of the Bills to Northern Ireland demonstrates that we are fully committed to playing our part in ensuring that children and vulnerable adults are protected and that the legislation for this continues to be consistent across the United Kingdom," the Minister concluded.

The Video Recordings Bill was introduced to the House of Commons at Westminster as fast–track legislation on 15 December and goes to a second reading in the House of Lords early in 2010 with the necessary 'legislative consent' to the principle of extending the provisions of the UK Video Recordings Bill and the 'transferred matters' of the Digital Economy Bill to Northern Ireland approved by the Stormont Assembly on 11 January.

Once enacted, it will amend the Video Recordings Act 1984 to ensure that all video games that are sold or supplied on discs or other physical products are appropriately age classified.

In practice this would mean that anyone selling/supplying video games which are classified as only suitable for persons aged 12 years and above would be caught by the offences to be set down in the amended Act.

In addition, it is proposed that the Video Standards Council will take on the responsibility for classifying all video games and they would use the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) classification system.

(BMcC/GK)