The United Kingdom’s ongoing efforts to ban loli. Politics and Rights never mix sometimes~
In an ongoing effort to ban loli, the United Kingdom’s parliament has proposed a bill, entitled the “Coroners and Justice Bill” that proposed a ban on possession of all things loli.
Justice for all, or Justice for none?
What I do hope to iterate here is that first and formost, after reading Sankaku Complex’s post on this, I was tempted to point out a few issues.
First and foremost, the initial bill as outlined by the UK government was in partial fact due to this survey report. Which draws on not only the view of the public, but of several organizations.
The idea was to either extend the existing Protection of Children Act to cover loli, or to come up with an entirely new bill, which, by majority vote, ended up going to the latter. A strange amount of people opted for “do nothing” though -_-
In light of this, several organizations have expressed their support for such a proposal, some of which include law enforcement agencies like the Police Federation of England and Wales.
The progress of passing a bill in parliament has been elaborated on so kindly by my hostee, Randall. Of whom with I wholeheartedly agree that the information outlined here needs to be ironed out as cleanly as possible.
In British Parliament, the progress of passing a bill is (and may remain so for some time), a rather long and drawn out affair. I don’t deny that it helps pass laws that pass under a decent amount of scrutiny and in some ways can be considered to be “fair”.
Parliament passes bills through two houses, the house of commons and the house of lords. The process of legislation within each house goes through a period of (usually) 5 stages.
1. The First Reading
2. The Second Reading
3. Committee stage
4. Report Stage
5. Third Reading
The stages upon which a bill goes through amendment and debate are essentially the Second Stage, Committee stage, Report Stage and Third Stage (In the House of Lords). This whole process can either take slightly over or several months, depending on the nature of the bill in question and/or the nature of the committee.
In the second stage, parties represented within Parliament and MPs have their chance to voice amendments they wish to see made manifest within said bill. It is only at the committee stage where a select committee scrutinizes the bill in question and seeks to amend particular clauses as outlined by the chairman of the committee. The normal method is to use a public bill committee, selected in terms of party representation within government, ranging anywhere from 16-50 MPs (at least in the house of commons…in the house of lords, usually the whole house goes at debate. This is called a committee of the full house)
EDIT (I left this out): The report stage can be viewed as a wider, more open form of the committee stage. The third stage in the house of commons is where the bill is debated over before being sent to the House of Lords. Whereas in the House of Lords, at this point it is also open to debate and amendment.
The bill can then go to the House of Lords after its been finished with the House of Commons, who scrutinize the bill and seek to make amendments to the existing amendments proposed by the house of commons. But since the House of Commons is the main decision-making house, it does have the power to take the bill directly to royal assent if they meet these 3 criteria:
- In each case, the bill must have been taken to the Lords at least one month before the
end of the session.
- One year must have elapsed between the Second Reading of the bill in the Commons in
the first session and the bill being passed by the House in the second session.
- The bill in the second session must be identical to the bill in the first session, containing
only amendments which are necessary to take account of the passage of time.
Well, either that or they are laws pertaining to taxation or finance.
Tax collectors for the Britannian Empire!
As it stands right now within the house of commons, the bill has passed its second reading and was voted on to be sent to a public bill committee, which will end its clause-by-clause consideration of said bill on or before the 10th of March, IN THE UK.
Right now, it’s no longer a matter of possession, but more of a matter of publication. It’s an age-old debacle that actually stands in some form, in many corners of the world. On a side note, Japan does, however, not view animated productions or publications to fall under the umbrella of being outlawed on the level of possession.
An amendment proposed during the committee stages regarding publication has been withdrawn, but the clause in question has not been specifically agreed to yet. They are still open to the floor, but as it stands, it doesn’t look up for much of a debate.
Clause 49, page 29, line 7, leave out ‘be in possession of’ and insert ‘publish by any means whatsoever to another’.
More specifically, regarding the minister who withdrew said amendment, Mr. Edward Garnier:
I hear the Minister say “downloading” from a sedentary position. There again, in order for it to be downloaded, it must have been placed on the web by somebody, so there is a publication on to the web address, presumably suspects.
Between now and Royal Assent we have to be careful to make sure what we mean by “possession.” As I understand from what the Minister said a moment ago, she is talking about publication. It is the transfer of an image from its creator on to the web and from the web to somebody else’s screen. That is publication. It may also happen to be possession, but publication is what we are talking about. If she leaves it as simply possession, as it is currently in the Bill, we shall be in the ludicrous position where the thought police will go around looking into people’s top right-hand drawers.I can see what will happen. Somebody will be raided for some other suspected offence—handling stolen goods or possession of drugs—and the police will search the premises and find in this imbecile’s top right-hand drawer an image that falls within clause 49(2). He will then fall foul of being charged with that offence, albeit that that disgusting image has never been seen by anybody else apart from the person who has been raided for drugs or possessing stolen goods.
I will leave it there, but I think we need to be careful about this. I refuse to be put off the case I am making simply because the subject we are talking about is one that arouses entirely proper revulsion. But, Mr. Gale, I ask you to ask the Committee if I can shut up and sit down.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
A police state? Not so much. But while it may be the ethical thing to do, it certainly strikes my heart with a pang of worry. Treading carefully may be all for the best.
But it kind of scares me that those (such as Mr. Garnier) who oppose the debatable aspects of this particular bill stood down while expressing concern while the committee was in session.
Following this particular timeline updater, as it stands, we’ve got quite the way to go, not taking into account this is the particular ping-pong stage wherein the bill can pass between the house of commons and house of lords several times, just like a ping-pong match.
I wonder if any of the ministers themselves play ping-pong~
This proceedings list (no artefact, it is not a transcript of whatever happened on the floor) contains the clauses in question and the amendments made during the committee sessions. Where we stand now, it looks to go on for a month or so more…
Regarding comments made by the ministers, it would think it is rather pretentious of them to think they could be used for grooming a child, but if you think about it from a purely legislative perspective, it is a fact that psychologically at least, you will be influenced by what you see. Taking a point from the Minister and committee member Ms. Maria Eagle:
Amendment 489 would remove images such as cartoons or drawings from the scope of the offence. We believe that that is an unacceptable limitation. Children see cartoon images regularly in day-to-day life. They are a well-accepted form of entertainment for children, and the characters are often well known. An offender could easily exploit that familiarity, using explicit images created in such formats, and such graphic cartoon images could be a powerful grooming tool. Reducing the scope of the offences described in amendment 489 by the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central could leave explicit cartoon images in circulation and open to serious misuse, and without the provision the police would be unable to remove them from people’s possession. The amendment would create a loophole in the law and in the new offence, which would be exploited.
This is, however, a very, very flimsy point IMO. It’s the age-old, beaten-to-death debacle of “whether playing too many violent video games will turn you into a serial murderer”.
Regarding the point of all children being “victims”
If the image in question is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character but does not have a child as a victim, is it not arguable that, by extension, all children are victims of that image?
The Minister in Question, Mr. George Howarth, and his stand from the get-go appear to be:
The fact that it is not a real child in the image—that it could have been conjured from the person’s imagination—does not make it any less a paedophile activity. How can the hon. and learned Gentleman say, for example, that what the elderly gentleman who seems to have been evoked may do with an image that he has conjured up from his imagination in the privacy of his own home as part of a paedophile activity, will not lead to other things? It seems self-evident that if somebody can get gratification from that sort of activity, it may be but a short step towards involving real images of children and real activities. I honestly think that the hon. and learned Gentleman has got it wrong in principle as well as in terms of interpreting the Bill.
His stand is that children are, by extension, victims of these forms of imagery because they aid and abet such deviant sexual tendencies! Not that they are victims of a victimless crime! That’d be dividing by zero!
I personally think that’s a little pretentious, and I myself do not think that this is necessarily representative of an entire nation. A bill which becomes an act defines a nation’s laws! This has to be looked over carefully and in many ways, for it would seem that only those with a genuine attraction to 3D content like child porn would fall under this category of severe sexual deviance. I’m no politician, so i’ll leave the legislating bits right there where they belong.
All in all, there’s quite a ways to go before royal assent (by which the bill is made a law) is attained. I’ll be following this case as closely as I can, and I would like to give my thanks to the usual suspects (hongfire et al) for their insight and continued concern in this case.
Like Randall has said, and has been said many times, it’s a matter of free speech. What this is doing is upping the ante with playing Big Brother to a country that already faces increasing conservationism and restraint of free speech and civil rights.
It can certainly be argued that freedom of speech is, from the get-go, a very constrained right. I believe, however, that it should certainly be a right people are allowed to fight for, no matter what.
So, all in all, if you do live in the UK, you can write to your MP, and who knows, maybe on that stormy night while he pours over the mountain of papers on his desk, he may find your letter detailing your concerns and raise it in the house of commons!
Randall-kun has already provided what I think are some excellent points of note. Censorship is definitely very serious business, and this bill needs a good, thorough looking over.
I’d like to end off with saying that I only wish to present what I think are the issues of import raised here, and provide some factual background and if necessary, clear the air a bit. If I am lacking in information or have interpreted something wrongly, please do contact me or drop a comment. I’ll very much appreciate it 
Or, likewise, if someone has a point they wish to make; that is fine too!
I wonder how Rita handles all the information…
I’d like to thank melon farmers, Hongfire and the British Parliament. It’s been a learning experience!
Also, edit at 5.20 am GMT+8 T_T
Themocracy
In other words, Sankaku Shitplex was full of shit, as usual. Glad I stopped reading that site.
Thanks for the clarification. It’s helpful to read about the process that I and probably so many other people have little knowledge about. This particular topic always draws so many responses from people for some reason and I can’t wait to see it play out in the next few years.
On an unrelated note…
This comment of yours was the funniest part, considering how many websites exist whose sole purpose is to decry Japan as a country of weirdness and abnormalities based on some niche internet trivia.
[...] One of my wonderful hostees has taken the time to write up an article about it. It explains things a bit more thoroughly than mine does as far as the full process of creating an [...]
Wait… By the Minister’s logic, why don’t we ban all pornography, because everyone’s a victim?