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Mr. Straw: That is a pretty far-fetched analogy, but I can certainly see the case for banning a particularly dangerous aircraft. Neither side of the House is proposing to ban all firearms. Shotguns and rifles will still be readily available for licensed use. We are discussing whether we should ban particularly dangerous firearms--handguns.

Mr. Allason: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw: Yes, for the last time.

Mr. Allason: To return to the intervention of the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook), is it not the case that if the police had been doing their job properly, Hamilton would never have obtained the licence? Does not Lord Cullen's report make it clear that at one point there was a conflict between two police officers, and he had to decide which of the two was lying in their evidence?

Mr. Straw: Of course the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there was conflict between the advice of a junior officer and the judgment made by a senior officer--it is well known. With the benefit of hindsight, we can all see that the advice of the junior officer should have been followed. Before the hon. Gentleman continues his odious attacks on the way in which the police try to operate a difficult procedure, he should bear in mind the wholly unsatisfactory state of the law. Hamilton had no convictions and had not been to see a general practitioner for 20 years. There was no medical evidence to show that he was in the mental state that he patently was in, so the judgments were difficult. We also ought to recognise that police officers have to make such judgments every day and sometimes to stand by them five, 10 or 20 years later. That is difficult, and there is no suggestion in Cullen that the due process that is required by the unsatisfactory state of the law was not followed.

In 1970, the Home Office established a review of firearms control under the chief inspector of constabulary.

Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill): Before my hon. Friend moves on, will he agree that it is pointless to argue about the failure of the police in this case because public safety and the safety of children must not rely on every policeman for ever more always getting it right? That is nonsensical.

Mr. Straw: I entirely agree. That is why we have to change the way in which the system operates.

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I was saying that, back in 1970, the Home Office established a review of firearms controls under the chief inspector of constabulary, but the fate of that review starkly illustrates the huge obstacles placed in the way of action to improve public safety where there has been no atrocity to focus public opinion. The findings of that review, contained in a Green Paper on firearms control, were published by the then Government in May 1973. It recommended highly restrictive controls on firearms, a ban on all semi-automatic rifles, a considerable tightening of the licensing procedure, and higher age limits.

Had that Green Paper's recommendations been implemented, Michael Ryan could not have lawfully possessed the AK47 rifle with which he killed eight of his 17 victims in Hungerford; and the police in Scotland would have found it much easier to refuse Thomas Hamilton his licence for the 9 mm Browning with which he killed his 17 victims. But such was the opposition to the Green Paper that the then Government abandoned it, and no proposals for action were forthcoming until after Ryan had committed his murders in 1987, and even then the proposals did not go far enough.

We must recognise that we failed after Hungerford to put in place the controls necessary significantly to reduce the risk of such an event ever happening again. The then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), said that the arrangements put in place must be robust enough to last, perhaps, another 20 years. Unfortunately, they were not, because they were watered down by pressure from the shooting interests.

We cannot afford to make the same mistake again. The 1973 Green Paper put forward cogent arguments for tighter controls. It made the point--we all acknowledge it--that no system of legal controls, however stringent, is likely to be wholly successful in preventing criminals from obtaining firearms, but it demolished the argument that there is no connection between the extent of lawful controls and the criminal use of firearms:

"If dangerous firearms and their ammunition had been easier to obtain within the law, if the requirements on legal holders to keep their firearms in safe custody had been less strict, is it plausible to suggest that the extent of criminal and irresponsible uses of firearms would have been less? . . . In its present form the law in some circumstances allows unsuitable persons to possess firearms, or persons to possess firearms without having a legitimate use for them, or to possess more firearms than are required for such uses, or to take inadequate precautions against theft or misuse."

Although controls were tightened somewhat in the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, Lord Cullen reflected that view in his report. He endorsed research showing that there is a relationship between firearm ownership and firearm use. He explicitly rejected

"the contention that legally held firearms are of no significance to the commission of crime".

Lord Cullen also reported that, during the past 20 years, there has been a considerable expansion of the use of larger-calibre and high-calibre handguns. That has led to the growth of combat shooting. It has also led some shooters to don the trappings of combat, such as holsters and camouflage clothing. It has also caused others to feel uneasy about what appears to be the use of guns as symbols of personal power.

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I am one of the millions who feel uneasy about that, and who believe that we must now take effective measures to deal with the growth of an unpleasant gun culture. I know that the Bill, as well as the additional measures that we propose, will inconvenience many innocent and responsible people who happen to have gained enjoyment from the pursuit of target shooting sports, but I would address three points to them. First, as between participation in a sport and the preservation of life, the balance must fall firmly in favour of the right to life, not the right to a sport.

Secondly, even under our proposals, there will still be plenty of opportunities for enthusiasts to engage in shooting sports with rifles or shotguns.

Mr. Gallie: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman must excuse me. Many hon. Members want to speak and I have already given way a dozen times.

Thirdly, the quality of representations that we have all received from the shooting lobby shows, I think, that responsible shooters have been ill served by their representatives, whose arguments have often been tendentious and highly personalised. Those arguments reached their nadir when Mr. Marcus Harrison, of the Sportsman's Association, recommended that shooters in pursuit of their case should

"distort information and manipulate facts".

Mr. Harrison went on, disgracefully, to suggest:

"It is important for us to dig up any facts that can be used to question the integrity of those who run, organise, front and contribute"

to the Snowdrop campaign.

Mr. John Carlisle (Luton, North) rose--

Mr. Straw: No, I shall not give way.

It is of course the parents of Dunblane who are in the forefront of that campaign--bereaved parents described by Mr. Harrison, astonishingly, as "our enemies". Ever since Dunblane, the lobbyists for shooting organisations have adopted a complacent but in the end wholly self-defeating approach--one which clearly exasperated Lord Cullen, who said:

"Throughout the Inquiry the British Shooting Sports Council . . . were opposed in principle to any restriction on the availability of handguns; and objected not merely to the suggestion of one kind of ban or another but also . . . to various measures which stopped short of a ban. This entrenched attitude meant that as each measure was supposedly discredited what was at stake became the greater."

I said in the House on 16 October that we welcomed almost everything in the Secretary of State's statement and hence, by implication, in this Bill. The Secretary of State has made the case for going further than Lord Cullen recommended, so there is no need for me to detain the House by repeating what he said. The disagreement between us concerns whether there should be a complete ban on handguns in general civilian use. We believe that there should be.

The Secretary of State quoted the Association of Chief Police Officers in his support, but we strongly support the view of the Police Federation, which represents more than 100,000 police officers on the ground who argue for a complete ban on the compelling ground that the

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.22 calibre handgun is just as capable of killing as a larger calibre weapon. Indeed, if anything, the Police Federation understates the case. Some multi-shot .22s are quicker firing than larger calibre weapons, and easier to conceal. The August edition of the magazine Target Gun contained an article extolling the virtues of the .22 Black Mamba multi-shot pistol which, the article said, is virtually concealed in the firer's clenched fist.

Of the 40,000 .22 weapons already in circulation, at least 20,000--perhaps more--are of the multi-shot variety. There must be considerable anxiety that this number will grow as those who receive compensation for higher calibre weapons purchase .22 weapons.

The Home Secretary says that weapons will be kept in secure clubs, but the Bill provides for them to be transported under permit to and from competitions, of which many hundreds are held each year. Ironically, it was the British Shooting Sports Council which demolished the argument that such transportation outside clubs would be inherently safe, for it said in evidence to Lord Cullen:

"no matter what system of checks and paperwork is maintained in such circumstances, it would be a simple matter indeed for a shooter intent on recovering his guns to enter a competition, provide evidence to his club secretary that he had done so, recover possession of the complete gun together with the ammunition for it, and perpetrate an outrage."

The BSSC itself thus predicted that, under such arrangements, its members may end up perpetrating an outrage.

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