The sections get a bit small now, so I'll just tell you when they appear. This next one is the seventh section, entitled "Regulation of television and radio services". It had only Clause 37, a tiny clause.

Clause 37 : Application of regulatory regimes to broadcasters. It's a tiny clause, and had no amendments (and I doubt it ever will).

Clause 37 passed - no amendments

Another section, the eighth, entitled "Access to electromagnetic spectrum". Clause 38 and 39 were in this one.

Clause 38 : Payment for licences. Lord Clement-Jones had a lot of concern about competition between mobile phone operators. He was worried about how the spectrum would be divvied up between all parties, including emergency services and the like. He wasn't very satisfied with Lord Young of Norwood Green's responses, but he was the only one raising any objections, so the debate didn't continue for long.

Clause 38 passed - no amendments

Clause 39 : Enforcement of licence terms etc. There was one amendment from the government, which corrects a mistake in the Bill regarding financial penalties. Obviously no argument there.

Clause 39 passed - Amendment 242 agreed

After the last clause, there was a confusing situation where Lord Lucas tabled an amendment to add a new clause, but Lord Clement-Jones tabled an amendment to amend his amendment. Very odd. It was related to making sure that there was spectrum left over for the European emergency services, which the government understands and may return to.

Ninth section, "Video recordings" (which is also related to video games). Clauses 40 and 41.

Clause 40 : Classification of video games etc. The first amendment dealt with being more specific about what shouldn't be allowed in an 'exempted' work. For those who don't know, you have to submit a video to the BBFC to get an age rating, but if the general theme of the video is music, sport or religion, you don't have to submit it at all - it's exempt. This was started with the Video Recordings Act 1984 (which we're not going to get into here) and times have, obviously, changed. UFC is a sport which can be pretty damn violent, and more and more music artists are being allowed by their record company to do more and more risqué things. So, there is a need to update this for the 21st century.

There was actually a Bill introduced to do just this, the Video Recordings (Exemption From Classification) Bill, which was one of the Bills left on the scrapheap when the election was called, so it's dealt with in this enormous Bill. Amendment 246 also included a mention of "racist, homophobic or other discriminatory language", which Lord Monson (in his only contribution to the entire Bill) took issue with. He insisted that the word 'homophobia' "does not mean a dislike of homosexuals. If it means anything at all, it means an aversion to one's own kind". He accepts that it is in common usage, but disagrees that it should be in an Act of Parliament. Lord Addington (stepping in for Lord Clement-Jones) thought this was a rather silly comment, since if you start going back to the original Greek for meanings of words, "that way madness lies".

Nevertheless, everyone seemed to agree with the principle, though the Lord Bishop of Manchester warned that the prohibition of discriminatory language could affect comedy performances, and also religious sermons where, for example, "theological views that were critical of other religions were expressed". Lord Davies of Oldham assured Lord De Mauley (who tabled the amendment) that the government are thinking about it.

Clause 40 passed - no amendments

Clause 41 : Designated authority for video games etc. Lord De Mauley returned, asking how the video games authority can be sure that a video game should be given to the BBFC if it should receive an R18 rating - that is, if it's pornographic. It's not explicitly mentioned in the Bill that the BBFC should be in charge of porn, not video games regulators. I wasn't aware that hard-core video games was a big problem at the moment (I'd like someone to show me more than five, not including the wacky Japanese stuff that would never be released in the UK anyway). The government insisted that everything would be okay, and the right body would be judging the right material.

Lord Howard of Rising pointed out with his amendment that there is a disparity between the BBFC ratings and PEGI (Pan-European Games Information) ratings, so a "game based on a film that was classified as a 15 by the BBFC could be turned into a work with a minor amount of interactivity, which would suddenly move it to a 16 under games classification". The chief point he was making, however, was concerning 'hybrid' products - that is, media which has interactive and linear content. Who rates the product? Baroness Howe of Idlicote chipped in with an example that we could have a situation where "a video game contains a series of films and yet the disc has a PEGI classification, which, according to the Bill, could bear no relation to the BBFC classification". Clearly this idea of hybrid products produces a very confusing situation. If the BBFC governed all types of video works it would be much simpler, but what can you do. Clearly we don't want a situation where we have "a product that is primarily linear being repackaged as a game to avoid robust BBFC classification".

You may remember from Second Reading that I told you the Lord Bishop of Manchester complained about the use of Manchester Cathedral in 'Resistance: Fall of Man'. Well, he brought it up again: "a games manufacturer created visual footage of the inside of Manchester Cathedral, without permission, as the setting for a very violent fantasy fighting scene, including all sorts of nasty creatures, none of which I recognised as regular worshippers," - this got a big laugh, ho ho ho - "using futuristic weapons. The episode showed me how much we have moved on from the days of pixelated Pac-Men wobbling across the screen". I'm pretty sure it wasn't video footage, but a level in the game that you could run around, so not quite relevant to this amendment. Never mind.

Lord Davies said that they wanted the VSC to become "a clear authority for games", like the BBFC is for video works. The government doesn't want the BBFC to be in charge of everything.

Clause 41 passed - no amendments

After Clause 41, there was an interesting debate on a new clause concerned with protecting kids online. She said that the "incongruity between what happens online and what happens offline makes a mockery of our law and creates a dangerous division between the real and the virtual world which we really should not continue to tolerate". She mentioned that Quake Live is based on an offline game (presumably Quake III Arena) which received an 18 certificate. So, she thinks that being able to log on to Quake Live and just play isn't right, given that it's for over 18s. Worryingly, she said that the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society claims "pornography has negative effects on individuals and communities. This is something which we all know but which we need to bear in mind when framing new legislation". Wait, "something which we all know"? What?

Regardless of the details, she's right that there is an incongruity between the real and virtual worlds when it comes to age restriction, but what can be done? Lord Mackay of Clashfern brought out statistics from Dr Tanya Byron, such as "63 per cent of children had lied to their parents about their online behaviour", "44 per cent boasted that they could hide unsuitable internet activity from their parents" and "53 per cent had deleted their browser history". Okay, so kids are liars, true, but that hasn't changed since the dawn of time. Baroness Buscombe highlighted the age divide with her kids "accessing all kinds of stuff on the screen without my knowledge and without my understanding". To be fair, home computers have been popular in Britain since around 1982, so anyone who was about 10-12 years old then (in other words, born in 1970) should be quite comfortable with computers, and those people will keep getting older and older. Of course, the Lords are all over 40 (as far as I know), so being comfortable with computers is the exception here (the Earl of Erroll is the only one who clearly knows his apples).

All this talk of protecting the kids is fine, but can it work? Lord Howard isn't sure: "Listening to the statistics... makes one wonder, laudable though the intentions behind these amendments may be, how they can possibly be made to be effective". Lord Davies insists that they can do something, though. He mentioned the amusing-sounding Click Clever, Click Safe campaign, with the 'Green Cross Code'-style slogan, "Zip It, Block It, Flag It". Whether this will help parents to protect their kids I don't know. As for selling stuff to under-age people online, the government's position is clear: "what is illegal offline is also illegal online. There is no distinction between the two".

Schedule 1 : Classification of video games etc: supplementary provision. Lord Howard was concerned with charging a fee for different formats of the same game. If a game is released on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, it gets three separate rating fees. PEGI apparently does this already - "and very lucrative it must be, with so many different ways of playing video games" - but he asked if this is really the right thing to do. The BBFC doesn't do it, so why should anyone else? Well, Lord Davies made the point that "a change in format can lead to a different perception and impact of the game" - and I guess there's a big difference between releasing a film on Blu-Ray and DVD, and releasing a game on PSP and PS3. He also made the point that, as it is, "publishers will not be able to take several already classified works, cut them and repackage them in a new way and then seek to rely on the previous classification certificate for the work in question". Lord Howard bowed to Lord Davies' "much greater knowledge of video games than mine. I do not know when he finds time to play them".

Schedule 1 passed - no amendments