The Soft Target

Admittedly, thus far much of the noise in Parliament on this front has been made by Keith Vaz, an MP whose contributions to the videogames debate are so frequent and so consistently ignorant and uninformed that even his fellow parliamentarians have become sick of him. His shocking and utterly false assertion this week that games are available in which the player can rape women was challenged by Ed Vaizey MP, while his ongoing promotion of the tragic Stefan Pakeerah murder case as an example of videogame-inspired violence (both the police and the court system having ruled out any possible link) has been dismissed by the minister responsible, Margaret Hodge.

Vaz' one-man quest against the videogames industry continues, however - and indeed, it seems that it's not entirely a one-man quest any more. While the headlines were stolen by Vaz' statements to the House, it transpires today that Gordon Brown himself is to meet Stefan Pakeerah's mother to discuss the question of violent videogames.

A triumph for Vaz, then, and a sad defeat for any modicum of common sense. While Giselle Pakeerah's loss is truly tragic and saddening, her claim that her son's murder was inspired by Rockstar's Manhunt is patently and provably false. It was her son, not his killer, who owned the game. The game doesn't even feature the type of murder weapon used in the killing - and moreover, the killer was clearly inspired not by playing a game, but by the debt he owed to a drug-related gang.

Giselle Pakeerah, in her grief, has been coldly and cruelly manipulated, becoming a tragic champion in the battle against a medium that had nothing whatsoever to do with her son's murder. Who, after all, is going to argue with a grieving mother? What possible response can Gordon Brown have to her statements - however ill-informed they may be - than to nod sympathetically?

Moreover, I suspect that Brown - and those who have set up this meeting, Keith Vaz himself undoubtedly among them - knows this perfectly well. Gordon Brown doesn't want to be advised on his media policy by Giselle Pakeerah. He wants to meet her so that when he announces his already well-laid plans in this regard, he appears to have consulted the grieving mother - which will play well for the tabloid press who are hounding him to Do Something about the country's allegedly rising crime levels.

It's a desperately worrying time for anyone with an interest in freedom of expression, but more so for anyone involved in the creative industries in the United Kingdom. One point of light at the end of the tunnel may be the Byron Report, which is due out in the coming weeks. I suspect that the report's author, Tanya Byron, is not likely to be a willing patsy for the Labour government's preferred policies. This report, with any luck, will actually set the facts straight.

Whether that will be enough to get videogames off the hook as Labour desperately seeks to rebuild its public image, however, remains to be seen.