New chief censor treads with caution

A senior civil servant who played a leading role in securing the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland was named yesterday as Britain's chief censor.

Sir Quentin Thomas, 58, succeeds Andreas Whittam Smith as president of the British Board of Film Classification.

His appointment comes during a period of great change for the board, which has been relaxing its attitudes to ratings after extensive research into public opinion. It was also forced to revise its classifications on hardcore sex videos after a legal challenge.

But in his first public comments on his new role – which pays £28,000 for about 25 days' work a year – Sir Quentin indicated that he may take a more cautious, arguably conservative, line.

He ruled out any move to downgrade or even abolish classifications. Mr Whittam Smith, the founding editor of The Independent, used his valedictory annual report to suggest that classifications might become advisory, rather than mandatory.

"[Film] is a very powerful instrument," Sir Quentin said. "Its immediacy and potency means that people believe, in my view rightly, that it has be treated with caution and some system of regulation and classification is needed."

He said he believed the board operated very well as an independent body. None the less, he suggested that there might be a need for Parliament to state its views on regulation more clearly.

Sir Quentin said the decision to allow hardcore sex videos to become more widely available, for example, had followed full and thorough legal procedures, but there remained a question mark over whether that was what people really wanted.

Sir Quentin is a married man with three grown-up children. Apart from his work in the Northern Ireland peace process, he spent much of his career at the Home Office.