The Commons has blocked a Bill seeking to give Parliament power to take action over violent films.

Julian Brazier's British Board of Film Classification (Accountability to Parliament and Appeals) Bill was being debated on Friday, with the Conservative MP appealing for cross-party support.

However all three frontbenches of the main party spoke against it, with arts minister Margaret Hodge calling on MPs to await the outcome of a review on the matter being conducted by child psychologist Dr Tanya Byron.

Brazier's Bill seeks to make provisional senior appointments to the British Board of Film Classification answerable to Parliament and to establish an appeals procedure against its decisions.

It would allow 50 MPs signing a Commons motion to trigger an appeal against a BBFC ruling to restore cut material or lower the classification of a film.

Brazier also wants tougher penalties for the distribution of illegal works.

Debate

In the debate he claimed that there is a growing public concern about a "rising tide of violence" in the country.

"The growth in violent offences is linked to the growing availability in the media of extremely violent and explicitly sexual material," he said.

"My Bill seeks to address what I believe is one of the fundamental drivers of our increasingly violent society."

He added that a Ministry of Justice report published last year spoke of "negative psychological, attitudinal and behavioural effects" of extreme pornographic material, such as increased aggression.

He said: "There will always be those who claim you can have a correlation without a cause, that this whole phenomenon can be explained away by saying those prone to rape have a greater pre-disposition to view pornographic material.

"We don't accept it and never have accepted it in areas like simulated child pornography or racist literature."

'Difficult'

Hodge said the BBFC, while not getting it right every time, did an "extremely good job in incredibly difficult circumstances".

She said the government had responded to legitimate concerns on the issue by asking Dr Byron to report on whether further regulation to protect children was needed.

Hodge added that ministers would respond if action was required as a result of the review.

Conservative arts spokesman Ed Vaizey said he had concerns over enabling MPs to have a say over appointments for senior BBFC positions.

"I have no reason to believe that the current process of appointment is flawed in any way," he said.

"There's no evidence at all that the decisions are made with the interest of the film industry in mind."

He also dismissed the Bill's proposal for appeals against BBFC rulings through a motion by MPs as a "recipe for chaos and disaster".

Liberal Democrat spokesman Don Foster accepted there was an issue to be addressed but there were "very large swathes" of the Bill he found "deeply worrying".

He said the majority of people were happy with the current classification system.

"I believe the proposals contained within this Bill would give politicians an undue and dangerous influence over these sorts of issues about which I would become very uncomfortable," he argued.

'Double jeopardy'

Tory chairman of the culture, media and sport committee John Whittingdale said there would be a danger of "double jeopardy" caused by retrospective decisions.

He reported that "most of the industry are very concerned" about the proposals.

Support came from Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs committee and a long-standing campaigner against violence in video games.

He said the Bill "puts forward a procedure which allows the most violent of these games not to circulate in this country" but warned that ministers may not agree.

"Successive prime ministers have been running ahead of their governments on this issue because they have, in the meetings that we have had with them, been very concerned," he argued.

"But I have to tell the House that departmental ministers... have not, I fear, understood the real concern among members of the public about the way in which this whole issue has operated."