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Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Sir Peter Lloyd.
5.33 pm
Sir Peter Lloyd (Fareham): I am not going to follow the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) in his disquisition on the single currency, but I am happy to endorse what he says, and hope that his party listens to him with care. Instead, I should like to reach guns and sentencing via Hong Kong--a circuitous route, I know.
I applaud the references to Hong Kong in the Gracious Speech. I took the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1990 through the House. It proved a far-sighted measure--good for Hong Kong, for China and for the United Kingdom--even if it was more limited than I would have liked it to be. I was conscious, however, that some loose ends were left, which I expected to be dealt with reasonably soon afterwards. Citizenship for war widows was one example. Although the substance was conceded, with an undertaking that they could come to the UK whenever they wanted, the desire for citizenship was insensitively and pointlessly denied for years.
That is now to be remedied, I believe, but it should have been done before. I hope that any other such claims on our duty and loyalty to the people in Hong Kong--for instance, in relation to the armed services or the ethnic minorities, who have no other home--will be dealt with imaginatively and generously.
It would be a pity if our departure from Hong Kong were marred by minor meanness. I am glad that we shall be having a debate on Hong Kong before Christmas, when such matters can be dealt with more thoroughly than I can do now.
We shall also have a debate, it seems even sooner, on the firearms Bill. It was right that the Government should immediately set up a review of gun laws in response to the appalling atrocity at Dunblane. It was right to pay special attention to the bereaved parents and the horrified disbelief of the public at large. It is, however, seldom right to legislate at high speed out of sympathy and guilt. Our duty in the House is to make sound, just and effective law. Lord Cullen appears to have produced a thorough review, which should be studied and thoroughly discussed. I am not yet convinced that the Government are justified in going beyond his recommendations.
I have never been interested in shooting. It has always seemed to me a boring sport, and I have always felt suspicious of people who find it exciting. However, many law-abiding people gain sober pleasure and satisfaction from the combination of discipline, co-ordination and concentration that accurate shooting requires. They are not a threat to society. Their guns are held securely, and we can require that they are held even more securely and that licences are even more difficult to obtain.
We should do that, but I wonder whether it is right, or a fitting memorial to the murdered children, to ban a lawful sport and to incur a large bill for compensation, which could be spent on genuinely effective anti-crime programmes, when there is little or no evidence that the public--children or adult--would be any better protected as a result.
I have similar reservations about the crime Bill. It contains much of value, but its proposals, particularly on sentencing, do not seem to have been properly thought through, and we shall regret it if they reach the statute book unchanged. It will not achieve greater honesty in sentencing, and ending parole will leave the public less well protected. Minimum sentences will not better deter, but they will certainly lead to injustice in a proportion of cases, which will bring those changes, and thus criminal justice in Britain, into disrepute.
By contrast, not enough use is made of indeterminate sentences--partly, I suspect, because, to sound fiercer, they are called life sentences, although that greater honesty that is much spoken of in this context would demand another name.
I made those points more fully in the debate on sentencing in the summer. As I shall no doubt repeat them on Second Reading, I shall not weary the House now. I will say that Parliament has the duty as well as the power to limit the discretion of judges, if justice and the safety of the public require it. In 1991, Parliament restricted the right of courts to take previous offences into account. That was a mistake that had to be remedied.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed):
Never have home affairs Bill provided such a large proportion of the Gracious Speech--and that was true even before two Bills were added, although that was more by accident than design. I welcome the Prime Minister's decision--a genuine change of mind to incorporate the stalking Bill and paedophile register into the Government's programme--but I criticise some previous actions. I heard the Minister of State's announcement the week before because I attended the conference that he addressed, and it was successfully designed to secure the headline "Government will put stalkers behind bars". However, he never said that the Government would not introduce the Bill. That should have been the announcement: "Government to exclude stalking Bill from programme". Thankfully, that was overturned by the Prime Minister.
To compound the felony, Ministers went around saying that a private Member's Bill would have been a fast-track method of dealing with that legislation. Clearly some Ministers have never attempted to take a private Member's Bill through the House--otherwise they would know that such a Bill could not be introduced until shortly before Christmas at the earliest, and that its prospects would depend on which hon. Members came high in the ballot. I can think of two or three Conservative Members--a couple of whom have intervened in this debate--who would not have adopted such a Bill. Also, the subsequent stages of a private Member's Bill are much more staggered than those of Government Bills.
If the Government want to know what is meant by a fast-track Bill, they should consider their agenda for Thursday, when the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Bill will be taken on a fast track through the House in Government time. That is the only real fast track that allows proper debate and consideration. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe), suggested that the stalking Bill could be taken through all its stages in one day--that we should not even debate and properly examine the details of that complex legislation. One can take a Bill through the House reasonably quickly and still examine it properly. Taking it through the House without any debate at the closing moments of Friday business is not a reasonable way to legislate--and would be a great disservice to the people whom we seek to protect. Both Bills are important. If we get them right, they are potentially of real value.
Other Bills have fallen by the wayside. The Government have now announced that they are sympathetic to a sex tourism Bill, but it is still not in their programme. This afternoon, the Home Secretary appeared to suggest, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne), that the Government have not finally decided to exclude such a Bill from their programme. Perhaps it will appear as one of the other measures that will be laid before us. The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not seem to exclude that possibility, so we will continue placing pressure on him.
We would like a Bill, or the inclusion of appropriate clauses in other Bills, to regulate the private security industry. It remains a scandal that criminals can gain such
easy access to an industry that offers them the opportunity to commit further crimes while posing as protectors of the public. The industry itself wants change and is crying out for regulation.
We are in favour of draft Bills, but it is a bit of a joke to say that the identity cards Bill is being published as a draft. It has already been the subject of widespread consultation and the Home Secretary has already told Ministers which flags must appear on the card. It is called a draft Bill because of deep division in the Government.
The route for draft Bills looks compromised and blocked, now that the draft adoption Bill is not to feature in the Government's programme. It was the subject of widespread consultation but has disappeared from view, despite having enjoyed widespread support--which suggests that the Government's inclusion of various measures as draft Bills is not constitutional reform but the pigeonhole into which losing candidates were put when left out of the Queen's Speech.
We welcome the Police Bill. I am on record as arguing that it should have come before the House before the Security Service Bill, because it attempts to put in place a system of national co-ordination of police intelligence and national operations against crime, into which Security Service work must be plugged. The provision for formal authorisation of eavesdropping is important and we need to get it right. It raises the matter to which the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) referred--press speculation that admissibility of eavesdropping evidence in court might be introduced by means of yet another Bill. The Home Secretary sounded as though he had not heard about that issue before and gave an extremely defensive answer.
It is a matter of anxiety that a body as important at the National Criminal Intelligence Service appeared to command such little confidence in a recent survey. That service's work is extremely important. Its position has been far too shadowy and has been inadequately provided for in legislation.
What is needed are more policemen and confidence-building measures in communities. Must the new policeman's helmet be in the form that has appeared? The public will find it baffling to see police officers looking like people gathering for a cycle club outing. Police uniform has some bearing on public perception, and many officers regard the dignity of their uniform as something to be considered with care. I appreciate that the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), who is the Minister of State, Scottish Office, is not in a position to comment, because the traditional helmet is not worn in Scotland except by the British Transport police. However, that helmet is significant in England, where the public make traditional assumptions. Anything that chisels away at those assumptions can be unwise.
We have said all along that we will assist during the passage of the Firearms (Amendment) Bill through the House. The Government have accepted a mass of Lord Cullen's recommendations. Some of them present cost problems. The vetting of youth leaders is important, but the Scout Association has pointed out that it will incur extra costs. Many other organisations will do the same. Those costs will represent an investment in preventing crimes that may be committed by unsavoury people who get into youth leadership work, and will ensure that youth
organisations can continue their good work. That is vital in turning another generation of young people away from crime. Their role is underestimated.
All parties have gone beyond Lord Cullen's recommendations on handguns, which did not say that they should be outlawed. All parties have sought, in different degrees, to take account of strong public concern and demand. That emphasises my party's belief that there should be a free vote on that legislation--the differences of opinion we have heard from Conservative Members make it obvious that that should be so--or some hon. Members will be dragooned into voting for something in which they do not believe and think unwise.
The Government's proposals on handguns do not command support from people who would like a total ban or from shooting sports organisations, which view the proposals as unworkable and offering no reasonable prospect of a continuation of Olympic standard sports shooting. Nor do the Government's proposals command support among the police. The Police Federation has made it clear that it anticipates real difficulties in trying to administer the Government scheme. We must look for another approach. When an amendment on a total ban is proposed--perhaps by a Labour Front Bencher--right hon. and hon. Members will examine its exemptions. Will there be an exemption for professional use, such as by veterinary surgeons? Will there be an exemption that would allow the Commonwealth games to take place in Manchester in 2002, as planned? It is clear that all party leaders have felt it necessary to respond to enormous public concern.
The Government will also have to re-examine compensation. They have shown a willingness to compensate at market value the owners of guns that are made illegal, but clubs may be forced to close. Many of the legitimate businesses involved are small firms of the kind that the Government claim to favour, but those firms are being hit disastrously. Compensation must not be limited to gun owners. If the Government's proposals are passed, some gun owners will be unable to use their legal weapons because no club will be available to them--and will be unable to sell those guns because the market in them will have collapsed. If a total ban is not introduced, some provision will have to be made for that category. Let us not pretend that the legislation that we eventually pass will solve the problem. Many other types of gun will still be legally available and licensed and there will be many illegal guns. Effective policing remains crucial.
We want the Government to look at the knives issue and we have underlined our willingness to co-operate. Even if the only effect of banning combat knives is to prevent certain types of knives from being advertised, that, in itself, will be helpful.
We are also concerned about violence on television and videos. I gave a wry smile when I heard the Home Secretary say with pride that the Government had legislated against violent videos, as I knew that it was the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton), supported by hon. Members on both sides of the House, that forced the Government to take action in a previous Criminal Justice Bill.
I want to deal with sentencing. Our prisons are already scandalously overcrowded. Leading figures in the Prison Service concede that we might have to move to weekend prison sentences to cope with the pressure on our prisons.
Prison regimes designed to stop people coming out of prison as hardened criminals are falling by the wayside because of the pressures on the service. It is against that background that the Government want to make the fundamental constitutional change of taking away from courts and judges the ability to decide when life or other sentences are appropriate.
The issue is not whether a rapist should receive a life sentence at the second offence; it is whether Parliament should decree that a judge should, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, pass that sentence. That is what the issue is about--not the effectiveness of particular sentences. It is about what the framework should be. We believe that the proposed legislation--as well as its Scottish shadow to be brought in in its wake--is fundamentally misconceived. It runs counter to the Government's previous policies and legislation and to the work of previous Home Secretaries, such as the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd). There are constitutional objections as well as numerous practical objections.
If the legislation is passed, in cases of rape there will be fewer guilty pleas and greater ordeals for women victims of rape as they are questioned in an extremely unpleasant and oppressive way. More rapists will walk free because they will not have the incentive to plead guilty. Indeed, some rapists may murder because there will be no difference in penalty for the two crimes.
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