Oral Answers to Questions

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I know that my hon. Friend has done a lot of work on supporting parents and children in transparency in this area. Something that we want to do in the media Bill is to regulate video on demand in the same way that we do with broadcast. We continue to view the BBFC age ratings as best practice, and I too welcome the news this week about Amazon taking on those ratings.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

T6.   The leisure sector faces severe challenges coming out of covid and seeing energy bills increasing by 300%. Leisure centres in my constituency have contacted me to ask why they are excluded from the Government’s energy and trade intensive industries scheme. Can the Minister tell me why publicly owned pools and centres have been left off the list of sectors eligible for vital support, and does he acknowledge that closures of not-for-profit facilities are inevitable unless something is done?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

As I said earlier, I am acutely aware of the difficulties that are being felt, but they are happening in different parts of the country, which is why we are taking time to have a look at exactly where those specific problems are and what measures we may be able to take to introduce some help and support. The other thing to think about is that some of these buildings are very old and very expensive to run, so we perhaps need to consider a longer-term solution as well.