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Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point, although I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will be surprised that it has taken him so long to get there. Assuming that the hon. Gentleman is not synthetic in his strong views on the banning of knives, will he now give a clear definition of a combat knife so that the House can legislate swiftly to outlaw them?
Mr. Straw: If the hon. Gentleman had been here earlier--
Mr. Straw: In that case, if the hon. Gentleman had been awake, he would remember that I quoted the representative of the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, which has said that if they can get a man on the moon--
Mr. Fabricant: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. When one asks a clear question for a clear definition so that the House can legislate--for the record, I have been present throughout the whole debate and have heard what the hon. Gentleman is about to read out--is it in order for the hon. Member to rattle out an answer that he gave a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes ago and not to answer my question?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): That is not a point of order for the Chair. Indeed, if it were, the burden on the Chair would be tremendous.
Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman knows very well that the drafting of Bills does not take place across the Floor of the House. However, like the Police Superintendents Association, I believe that it is possible to distinguish between a kitchen knife and a combat knife. What is
more, I also believe, and it was our opinion back in 1988--I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was in the House then, but no doubt he would have joined his hon. Friends and voted against the measures on the control--[Interruption.]
Mr. Straw: I know that the hon. Gentleman was not here. It is just as well, and he will not be here next time--
Mr. Fabricant: You still have not given us a definition.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. As the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant) is very keen that we should all be in order, I remind him that seated interventions are out of order.
Mr. Straw: We believe that it is possible not only to give a definition that will distinguish between kitchen knives and those disgusting combat knives, but to control the sale and marketing of combat knives, and we have done so for eight years.
I have made it clear that we require a more effective sentencing system. Given that only one crime in 50 results in a conviction, sentencing is only a partial solution to a far wider problem. A co-ordinated strategy is required to prevent crime and to tackle the underlying causes of crime, such as bad parenting, truancy, youth unemployment and drug and alcohol abuse. Each of the measures that we have proposed would make some difference and would improve the quality of people's lives, but taken together they would significantly shift the balance against the wrongdoer, and improve the self-confidence of citizens and their communities. They would re-establish the notion that responsibility and respect for others are the preconditions of rights and freedoms from others.
None of the proposals to which I have referred should be controversial, because they have been widely welcomed by the police, local authorities and groups campaigning for better standards of parenting. Yet time and again, our proposals are dismissed by this Administration. First, they say that the measures are not necessary. Then, as they discover how detached they are from public opinion, they introduce half-hearted versions of our proposals and hope that the public will not notice that they have made yet another U-turn.
The current Administration have presided over the near collapse of the youth justice system, which is ineffectual, wasteful and replete with delay. It permits scandals such as the one in Mansfield, Nottingham, where six young offenders were arrested 419 times last year before any effective action was taken. The Secretary of State always talks tough, but his actions are too often weak or even non-existent.
The Government have been panicked by our proposals and by an Audit Commission report that is likely to be damning in its criticism. Consequently, they have drawn up new plans for young offenders, as the Prime Minister told the Tory party conference. However, it seems that there are no plans to reform the youth courts, and there is little prospect of any action this side of the election. It has been the same old story with knives, child sex tourism, stalking and paedophiles: so anxious are the Government
to score cheap political points that they put the interests of victims and their communities below the self-interest of the Tory party.
Mr. David Mellor (Putney):
I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State on a vigorous speech, with almost all of which I entirely agreed. I am sorry that, owing to the constraints of time, I must focus on the one section with which I did not agree.
I can tell the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) that I recall the comment about losing the plot. It was made on the radio in the aftermath of the publication of the Home Affairs Select Committee's report. I assure the hon. Gentleman that, if I had thought that the Government had lost the plot on law and order, I would not have been afraid to say so, but that is not what I said. I suspect that he is relying on an errant transcription taken down from the radio.
I reiterate what I have said since Dunblane. I think that the Government would have been well advised to move more swiftly on this matter, and in the direction of a total ban. But I do not believe, and have never said--I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not continue to say that I said it--that the Conservative party has lost the plot on law and order.
I hope that the superficial, partisan element of this debate will be calmed down. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Prime Minister invited the Leader of the Opposition to go with him to Dunblane. The two of them stood together with the Secretary of State for Scotland and the shadow Scottish spokesman. As they were all deeply moved, indeed overwhelmed, by such a singular tragedy in the history of our nation, I hoped that it marked the beginning of a process that would enable the House to move swiftly and decisively towards a resolution of this matter in a way that would gain the public's sympathy.
Thomas Hamilton was able to obtain a small arsenal of handguns with the assent of the public as expressed through our laws and the way in which they were applied. He was then able to go into that school and massacre 16 infants and their teacher. It is perfectly understandable that the public want a repudiation of the gun culture, and of the introduction in this country of the alien concepts of the right to bear arms and the right to use handguns--I am not making the point about shotguns, because they are different--as depicted in American mass entertainment.
I still think that it would have been better to have disciplined discussions between the parties. Hon. Members should have had the opportunity to state their
views before the Government had made up their mind on their response to the Cullen report. My right hon. and learned Friend has proposed a measure that will go a long way towards resolving the problem: indeed, I previously thought that it could have been an opportunity for compromise. The tragedy is that public opinion has hardened. As predicted, Lord Cullen was unable to help on policy issues--he is a judge, and it is not a judge's job to make policy.
Mr. David Martin (Portsmouth, South):
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr. Mellor:
I do not have time to give way.
It is a judge's job to evaluate evidence, not to make policy. My right hon. and learned Friend must have been as distressed as the rest of us when he woke the day after he made his statement. It was as if he had done nothing about this matter. He said that, after such a singular tragedy, each of us should draw on our own experience when making up our minds, and I hope that that is the spirit in which hon. Members will make up their minds--some more speedily than others, because some of us have had experience of this problem. I was a Minister in the Home Office for more than five years, which is at least as much as anyone else. My view is that a tightening of the gun laws is long overdue.
The range of options is fairly narrow: we reject the Government's proposals--as some of my hon. Friends want to do--because they go too far; or we accept them as a reasonable balance between the interests of the wider community and those of shooters; or we say that they do not go far enough and that there should be a total ban.
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