Maybe the UK needs a Dangerous Government Act!

This month, one of the nastiest pieces of legislation in many a long while is creeping its way through the Houses of Parliament, due for its third reading before the end of April. The Government hopes to get royal assent by May 8th. It's called the Dangerous Pictures Act and its part of the huge Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill the UK government is ramming through Parliament.

It seems, rather belatedly, that civil rights groups like Liberty and Justice, and a number of members of the House of Lords are picking up on the authoritarian menace of this Act but is it too late?

The aim of the Act is to criminalise the possession of certain images the Government views as unacceptable in a 'decent' society. These include images of necrophilia and bestiality but, far more worryingly, they specify BDSM images where pain is applied to the breasts, anus or vagina of a woman. They have conveniently ignored the fact that 99% of these images are of a consensual nature and have simply devised an arbitrary rule of thumb for criminalising stuff they don't like.



With a prison population already exceeding 80,000 - an all time high - and threats on our doorstep from terrorists, gun crime and hard drugs, why in heaven's name is this government seemingly obsessed with creating new crimes?

There are many things about this proposed Act that horrify me. First, how did this get off the ground on the strength of one private member's bill - a guy trying to make a name for himself after one of his constituents was brutally murdered by her psychopath boyfriend, a man heavily into extreme pornography? Despite many, many people enjoying pornography of all sorts, do we have a record of savage sex murders on account of it? Of course we don't - and the government has admitted as much. They have confessed that they have no evidence that the images they are trying to criminalise are images of a crime i.e. forced or coerced participation, and no evidence either that possession of said images will lead to crime. They have no evidence at all in fact - they just want to play the heavy handed Nanny at the expense of people's liberty.

The second element that horrifies me is how poorly this whole Criminal Justices Bill has been scrutinised by our representatives in Parliament. It has been virtually waved through the Commons with nary a query. Ironically it has taken our House of Lords - a body which, on principle, I feel shouldn't exist - to start questioning much of the intent and consequence behind the passing of the Dangerous Pictures Act. It may however be too late to stop its momentum.

My third source of severe concern is the way this government makes policy, seemingly 'on the hoof' and in response to sensational headlines, somehow in hock to the 'redtops' . This Act has a lot in common with Tony Blair's promise that 'yobs would be taken to a cash point to get money for on the spot fines', the fact that few 'yobs' carry cash cards seeming to escape him. That idea collapsed in hoots of derision and so should this Act. It probably has good intentions but the lack of intelligence in its preparation and format makes this Labour government look the shallow fools they are.

It is opening the door to a wave of repressive legislation where people living their own lives, enjoying their own taste in erotica or pornography ( call it what you will) - and material which has been consented to by participating adults - will find their doors broken down at 7am by the porn squad.

Has the Labour Party forgotten, in its Nanny state obsession to do what's best for us, the concept of individual liberty? Has it forgotten the rights of the individual, unless they commit crimes - and NOT crimes invented by this government - to live unmolested by aggressive police action? The framing of this Act is childlike in concept and childish in preparation. At one point, before the Lords amended it , the proposed legislation read 'if an image is sufficiently disgusting'. Well what sort of a clause is that for an Act of Parliament, and by whose criteria?

I sincerely hope by some stroke of good fortune that enough Lords can be rallied to block this heinous piece of legislation before we slide into an authoritarian abyss but of one thing I am certain. I was a member of the Labour Party for nigh on 40 years but I will never vote for the bastards again unless and until they show some sign of focusing on what's really important in Britain and cease putting innocent people at risk of a prison sentence simply because of the pornography they enjoy.