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Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West): Will my right hon. and learned Friend explain a little further why getting such a measure on to the statute book quickly will help the people of Dunblane? It seems highly unlikely that such a horrible incident is likely to occur anywhere near the people of Dunblane in the foreseeable future. Are not they as concerned as anyone else that we should proceed in a careful and orderly way, and not in a hurry?
Mr. Howard: With respect to my hon. Friend, I think that it will be possible to examine the proposed legislation
in a careful and orderly way and with expedition. It is important to get such legislation on to the statute book as quickly as possible, and that is not inconsistent with examining it carefully. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be one of those Members who will ensure that we do indeed examine it carefully.
Mr. Terry Lewis (Worsley): Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Howard: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I shall make some progress.
The proposed Bill will ban all handguns from the home. It will outlaw higher-calibre handguns of the sort used by Thomas Hamilton altogether, and it will ensure that all other handguns are kept under safe lock and key at all times. The Bill will lead to the destruction of at least 160,000 handguns--80 per cent. of those legally held in Britain.
I know that some hon. Members believe that we should go further and ban all handguns completely, but I believe that we can both provide protection for the public and allow target shooting with low-calibre handguns--which has always been an Olympic sport--to continue in the security of clubs. Indeed, I believe that banning all handguns might drive some target shooters underground. That might well mean that the public had less protection than will be afforded by my proposals.
Clubs that cannot meet the new security arrangements will have to close. We will also ban the sale of guns through the post, narrow the grounds on which applicants can appeal on being refused a licence and outlaw expanding bullets except for the shooting of deer.
Mr. John Carlisle (Luton, North):
My right hon. and learned Friend will understand that there is a large lobby outside the House--innocent people who enjoy the sport of shooting--that entirely disagrees with the line that he has taken. It took six weeks to produce Lord Cullen's report. It is a comprehensive report, as my right hon. and learned Friend knows, because he, like me, has read it. Yet he has decided almost to ignore the report's conclusions. The report does not state at any point that all handguns, or the categories that my right hon. and learned Friend has put forward, should be banned. Why has he gone beyond the report? Why did he not stick to the report? Or is there some deep political motive of which my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are not aware?
Mr. Howard:
I understand the feelings of those members of the community to whom my hon. Friend has referred. He is right to say that the vast majority of them are decent, law-abiding citizens. I accept that. I do not agree, however, that the conclusion that the Government have reached ignores the conclusions of the Cullen report. We have carefully examined the report. We have carefully taken into account Lord Cullen's analysis and his conclusions. We disagree in some respects with his conclusions, but that does not mean that we have ignored them. On the contrary, we have given them the most careful attention.
Our proposals are clear and consistent. We promised to await the outcome of the Cullen inquiry, and we did. We promised to act speedily and positively after we received
his report, and we have. Contrast that with the reaction of the Opposition parties. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) stressed in September--
Mr. Budgen:
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr. Howard:
No. I am not giving way to my hon. Friend.
The hon. Member for Blackburn stressed in September that Labour would not make final decisions about gun control until it had
They were all wrong. The day before Lord Cullen's report was published, the Leader of the Opposition pulled the rug from under their feet. He rewrote Labour's policy. He let it be known without, apparently, telling his party's home affairs spokesman that Labour would ban all handguns. So much for waiting for Cullen. So much for studying his conclusions. So much for allowing people to keep lower calibre handguns under lock and key in clubs. The draconian measures described by Labour's rural affairs spokesman as a figment of people's imagination are now official Labour party policy.
Mr. Budgen:
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington):
Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Howard:
I give way to the hon. Member for Workington.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
If that is the case, it is quite clear that there are varying views across the Commons on these matters. Why not have a free vote? Then Conservative Members will be able to walk into the Lobbies quite freely and vote as we intend.
Mr. Howard:
The hon. Gentleman's repetition of the question that I answered earlier does not improve the question, and I have nothing to add to the answer that I gave earlier.
The Liberal Democrats have been just as hypocritical. At their party conference, they voted for a motion that endorsed the policies in the Firearms (Amendment) Bill. Two weeks later, their spokesman, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), said:
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)
rose--
Mr. Howard:
I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Beith:
We have never said that we would vote against the Bill. The issue, as I said when the Government's proposals were announced, was whether the Government's proposals for an 80 per cent. ban would prove adequate and workable. As the Police Federation has said that they are not, the Home Secretary should not be surprised that we take some lead from what the police say on this matter. Can he name any organisation, from either side of the argument, which thinks that the Government's proposals are satisfactory?
Mr. Howard:
There have been many reactions in support of the Government's proposals. Many people think that our proposals get this difficult balance right. The right hon. Gentleman has not seriously answered the question why the proposed legislation, which corresponds to the measures that he put to Lord Cullen, which he welcomed when I announced them on the Floor of the House less than a couple of weeks ago, are now proposals that his party is not prepared to support.
Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton):
This subject deserves a more serious and high-minded contribution than we have had so far. The Home Secretary is making much--unnecessarily, I think--of when decisions were made. The Government did not show us the Cullen report until a few hours before it was published and announced to the House, yet every heavy Sunday newspaper on 13 October, the day before the Government received Lord Cullen's report, ran almost identical stories saying that, irrespective of Lord Cullen's recommendations, the Government's response would be to ban handguns from the home. The Home Secretary surprisingly said that he did not know who had told the Sunday newspapers. Will he now tell the House that he has no evidence to suggest that anyone close to him or acting on his behalf told those Sunday newspapers exactly the same story?
"received and studied the conclusions of Lord Cullen's Inquiry".
That message somehow failed to reach the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson). He was telling his constituents:
"We support a ban on the holding of handguns in residential property. People such as yourself,"--
he said to one of his constituents--
"will still be able to own handguns but they must be kept safely under lock and key at properly run centres".
But, to be fair, the hon. Gentleman was just following the policy set down by the Opposition spokesman on rural affairs. In a letter to the Shooting Times and Country Magazine published on 3 October, the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) said:
"We do think that handguns should be limited to the Olympic Standard of .22 calibre and we do think there is an argument for handguns to be kept in secure storage and under supervision at clubs".
He went on to explain that claims that Labour supported more "draconian" measures were a figment of the "hysterical imagination" of the Shooting Times and Country Magazine.
"The Government's proposals have much common ground with our proposals to the Cullen inquiry . . . we are prepared to support and facilitate legislation based on those proposals"--[Official Report, 16 October 1996; Vol. 282, c. 836.]
Last week, the Liberal Democrats said that they would vote against the Bill. Once again, the gulf between the sanctimonious platitudes of the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and the squalid manoeuvring of his party is shown to be as wide as Westminster bridge.
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