House of Commons Hansard Debates for 12 Nov 1996 (pt 31)

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Time is up.

9.31 pm

Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton): We have had a sober and well informed debate on a serious issue. For the most part, it has been conducted with detail and knowledge and, of course, strong feelings. However, there have been some exceptions. The hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle) made yet another disgraceful speech, which plumbed depths even for him. I found the remarks of the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) difficult to take in the atmosphere of consideration that has permeated the debate.

The issue is so serious and feelings run so deep that I am not the only one to wonder why, when heavy issues of conscience such as abortion, Sunday trading and now the question of caning in English schools were deemed appropriate for a free vote, an issue on which Parliament and its Members will be judged in years to come is subject to a Conservative Whip so that Conservative Members will be dragooned through the Lobby to produce a decision which, as a consequence of that, cannot be sustained.

Making a law which, from its very birth process, cannot be stable, effective or long lasting, does no justice to the strength of feeling on all sides of the argument and on both sides of the House. Even at this 11th hour, I call on the Government to drop the Whip before Monday's votes and let Parliament decide so that the law that we make will endure.

If the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin) chooses to press his amendment to a vote, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Front Bench and I will vote against it. I shall advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to do the same. We are not happy with the Bill in certain key areas, but it is better than the law at it stands at present.

I live in Dunblane, but I do not approach this debate with any irrational knee-jerk reaction to one particularly awful atrocity. Like so many others, alongside the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister for Education, Housing and Fisheries, I have been deeply and permanently moved and changed by what I saw and heard in Dunblane on 13 March, but I still look on this key issue as being one of ensuring public safety and not some punitive raid on a legal hobby carried out by thousands of ordinary and largely law-abiding people. I react with passion and quite natural emotion to what happened that day at the hand of a crazed, legally armed and suicidal killer, but I address the issues of firearms control coolly,

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rationally and dispassionately. I find offensive the idea that those who argue alongside the Police Federation of England and Wales for a complete outlawing of handguns are to be defined as merely hysterical, emotional or somehow lacking in reason or justice.

I once shot a rifle as a recreation--it is perhaps one of the few sports that I did passably well--but I will never do it again. I do not, therefore, speak with ignorance on the subject or with insensitivity about a sport that will be affected by the law that we shall pass, but I believe that the right to life is greater and more important than the right of any person to conduct themselves in any sport.

The policy is not one of vengeance. Nor is it an instant reaction to be worried about such a vast and previously unseen arsenal of handguns. Having waited nine long months for this debate, this policy is not one of indecent haste. It is not a policy of blame or emotion to say that one category of firearms more than any other poses a very different and distinct threat to public safety and that we should do something radical to prevent what has now happened twice in a single decade in our country, when legally held, legally obtained firearms were turned against ordinary citizens.

Sir Jim Spicer (West Dorset): I know the hon. Gentleman well and I look on him, if I may say so, as a friend. He said that he has fired a rifle. I represented the United Kingdom in the modern pentathlon championships and had to fire a pistol. What he is saying is that never again will anyone represent the United Kingdom in the modern pentathlon, never again will any paraplegic who does not run the marathon or play basketball but who enjoys shooting a pistol be allowed to do so, and that such activity will be outlawed totally for all time. He is saying that we shall never again be represented at the Olympics or any other sport worldwide. Does he accept that?

Mr. Robertson: I respect the hon. Gentleman and I reciprocate his sentiments. It is with some feeling, therefore, that I say that when he makes a passionate plea for something that we might never do again, let him remember the innocents who died on 13 March and what they will never do again. We have to strike a balance--it is an onerous burden for us to do so--between those who might not take part in a sport as it is currently defined and those who have lost everything and are now campaigning to ensure that no other families have to go through the same tragedy. I do not find it difficult to make that judgment, most hon. Members do not find it difficult to make that judgment, and outside the House there is no doubt where the judgment lies.

It is not a policy of blame or emotion to say simply that we should identify handguns. It is no knee-jerk reaction to do now what we should have done after 1988 and to minimise the risk of another Hungerford or of a repetition of what happened on 13 March at Dunblane primary school.

Mr. Devlin: I ask for the hon. Member's assurance that if we pass the legislation in the form that he would like, that sort of massacre will never happen again.

Mr. Robertson: I suspected from the quality of the hon. Member's contribution that he would be unable to rise to the seriousness of the debate, and his intervention

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proves it. Had he been listening, he would know that I have just mentioned the minimising of risks. The Government made a decision about minimising the risks. There are 200,000 handguns in circulation and the Home Secretary, who does not consider himself a liberal dove on that or any other issue, has decided to minimise the risks by reducing that number by 80 per cent. My hon. Friends and I want to go 20 per cent. further than that in minimising the risks that we believe should be contained and which now exist.

The definition of a gun, in the original firearms legislation which replaced the zero regulation in the 1920s, is clear and unmistakable. A gun is a

"lethal barrelled weapon of any description from which any shot, bullet or missile can be discharged".

"Lethal" is the word. Such guns are designed to kill. That is their purpose and function, and pistols stand out in a special category. No other instrument of death, no other firearm licensed today, would have enabled one man to carry 743 bullets, to fire 106 shots, to cause 58 wounds, to kill 16 children and their teacher, to injure 15 people and to commit suicide himself--all within four minutes. Pistols are small, hidable and portable. They are also horribly lethal and we have to deal with that.

A number of the points that were made in the debate should be addressed. One point in particular must be addressed seriously--the claim by hon. Members that their postbags should tell them what to do. The October 1996 edition of the magazine, Target Gun, said:

"It is time for us to start writing again to our MPs, a brief letter, not detailed, just stressing our participation in an honourable sport that we wish to continue to enjoy. This is particularly important if your MP is Labour, but Conservatives too need to feel the weight of the pro-gun post bag."

We are feeling that.

I was handed a book at my surgery a week last Saturday by the secretary of the Clyde Valley pistol club, Mr. McGhie, who is a constituent of mine. It is 400 glossy pages long and was produced by the pro-gun lobby. It analyses all the evidence and the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) chose to quote from it during the debate. It has no price on it. It is being handed out free throughout the country. That takes a lot of money. Against that, the Dunblane Snowdrop petition's total resources at the moment are, I believe, £3,000. A gun lobby with a war chest of £250,000 is set against a sentiment and a petition signed by 750,000 people and hardly any money. Nobody should come to the House and claim that we should make a decision based on the postbags that we receive on the issue.

Mr. John Carlisle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Robertson: No. I have limited time and some of it has already been taken. Hon. Members have said that it is the individual and not the gun that causes the problem and that we should address the individual, not the gun.

Lord Cullen, in paragraph 1.11, was clear about that:

"There is no certain means of ruling out the onset of a mental illness of a type which gives rise to danger; or of identifying those whose personalities harbour dangerous propensities. On this ground alone it is insufficient protection for the public merely to tackle the individual rather than the gun."

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That is why we must address the issue, and why the Government have chosen to do so.

Some, such as the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook), say that everything was the fault of the Central Scotland police. The police, they say, did not implement the law, so we should pile the blame on one of the smallest police forces in the country. Then, apparently, we would have the solution to everything that happened.

Lord Cullen examined that idea in enormous detail. A deputy chief constable, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of constabulary, admitted an error and has resigned. That could be an example to many people on the other side of the argument. But I remind hon. Members what Lord Cullen said about the licence:

"On balance I consider that there was a case for revocation of Thomas Hamilton's firearm certificate and that it should have been acted upon. However, I do not consider that this would have been the end of the matter."

Using the usual double negative for which the legal profession has such a great affection, he continued:

"It is not certain that an appeal would have been unsuccessful."

That is Lord Cullen's considered view.

I knew the murderer, Hamilton. I was uneasy and angry about him, and my wife and I campaigned against him for years. But I recognise that the evidence against him is easier to see after the event, now that his supporters--he had many--have all disappeared like snow from a dyke. It is not sufficient, and never will be sufficient, to put the blame on an individual police force.

Now the Government have offered their solution, which has been berated both by Opposition and by Conservative Members. The Home Secretary has left a major loophole by saying that the Government will exempt .22 weapons. Those are said to be somehow less lethal than the instruments of death that are to be banned. However, in the letter sent to hon. Members, the British Shooting Sports Council wrote: