House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Dec 1996 (pt 49)

Mr. Frank Cook: The Home Secretary repeated today the statement that he has made many times, that the prime consideration is the safety of the population. No hon. Member would disagree: the question is how we ensure the preservation and protection of the population. For the purpose of the debate, I shall leave aside my disagreements with what I consider to be bad law. I do not have a vested interest, because I do not own a gun and I have never held one other than during my time in the forces. My only vested interest is as honorary pistol captain of the Palace of Westminster rifle club.

If the measure becomes law, and the odds are that it will, the consequences are already beyond dispute. There will be fewer clubs, because at the moment many clubs use municipal premises or Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve premises. They do not have their own establishments within which to pursue their sport. Those members of clubs that close who wish to continue participating in the sport with .22 calibre only will gravitate towards the clubs that remain.

Therefore, there will not only be fewer clubs but they will have larger memberships, and those members will have to store their weapons in club armouries. That means enlarged armouries. As we have heard, a Stockholm gun club with state-of-the-art security--the most secure provision that could be made, according to the Stockholm police--was raided.

We are creating a ram raider's dream, an Aladdin's cave of firearms from which Jack the lad can help himself. In the past, members of terrorist organisations within these isles of ours have done that at military establishments, and I am certain that others could do it at gun clubs. We are not only penalising a law-abiding section of the community and making it difficult for them, but creating a danger for the population that the Home Secretary has repeatedly said he wants to protect.

The answer to the problem is disassembly. If a set of "half pieces"--the trade term--is left in the club's armoury and each member takes home the other components with him or her, no one will have a working firearm. I ask hon. Members to think about whether that proposal makes sense. It not only makes sense, but, if one extended it to the .32 wadcutter--which is purely a target gun, that is used for no other purpose--it could well reduce compensation costs, and that might be advantageous for the Government.

One of the objections that has been made to the proposal is that not every weapon is amenable to easy dismantling. I have asked experts about that point, and they say that it is true. But they also said that there are very few such weapons, because they are going out of fashion. Walthers, which are impossible to disassemble, probably account for less than 2 per cent. of handguns in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, it would be reasonable to ask those who participate in shooting sports to stop using such increasingly outdated weapons--which, again, would reduce the amount of compensation that must be paid--and to rely instead on weapons that are amenable to dismantling.

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Yesterday evening, there was a demonstration of many weapons in the House. Every model was, within seconds, easily dismantled--as they must be for cleaning. I ask the Home Secretary please to realise that mandatory disassembly will increase public safety.

Overall, three basic requirements must be met in the legislation. First, it must be comprehensive; secondly, it must be properly enforced; and, thirdly, violations must incur an appropriate penalty. To ensure all those requirements, however, we must have a properly resourced, properly trained and well-motivated police force.

We know from our pre-Cullen and post-Cullen experiences and from the evidence that has emerged about Thomas Hamilton that those elements were not in place. How else can we explain the fact that gun clubs that cancelled Hamilton's membership have had their membership records confiscated by the police, and the police now refuse to relinquish them?

Many questions that must be answered depend on that type of evidence, but we are not yet able to obtain it. Nevertheless, we are pressing ahead with this legislation, under a guillotine. This Bill is bad law, because it is ill-conceived and impetuous. I passionately believe that, ultimately, the House and the country will eventually regret its enactment.

Sir Teddy Taylor (Southend, East): I am very grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for selecting my amendments Nos 63 and 64, although they are supported only by me. I thought that the selection was based on your traditional kindness, but I now think that the real reason is that you appreciate that, when you have a messy Bill, it is crucial to look for a solution. Although, understandably, you have no views on the Bill, I think that you must have seen that my proposal in amendment No. 63 is the sensible answer to a difficult situation.

Hon. Members have been speaking and voting on the Bill according to varying perspectives, because of the Bill's unusual features. I am sure that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) will be well aware that, in the previous Division, for the first time in my life, I went into a Lobby different from that chosen by my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker), for whom I have great respect.

I did so simply because I was sincerely and utterly appalled by the speech made by the Labour party Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). He said that he did not want to support the new clause simply because it might not pass. Even if that were a valid argument, it was not true. The figures from the Division show that, had the Opposition turned up in strength, they could have won on that new clause.

I have a horrible feeling--although I do not like to cast aspersions loosely--that probably the reason why they did support it was that it was moved by the Scottish National party. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan made a super speech--though I am afraid that I disagreed with it--but I voted for his proposal as a protest against the dreadful speech of the hon. Member for Hamilton and the dreadful principle behind it.

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Many of us have been voting for measures that we think are daft and saying things that we think are daft, because, through no fault of our splendid Home Secretary--who is a giant in the Cabinet--the Bill is a bit of a mess.

Mr. Salmond: If we keep making super speeches, will the hon. Gentleman be tempted into the Lobby with us again?

9.30 pm

Sir Teddy Taylor: If we hear more speeches like that made by the hon. Member for Hamilton, I shall do all kinds of crazy things, and vote for measures that I think are nuts.

Those of us who believe in things--the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and I believe in totally different things--should speak for them and vote for them in the House, and try to build up support for what we believe. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), who is sitting beside me, is a perfect example. He has been arguing strenuously for years about the dangers of the European Community. He has been laughed at and scorned and people have said that he was talking a load of rubbish, but now most of the Tory party agrees with him because he kept trying.

Unless we are prepared to argue for what we believe in, and to keep fighting and voting for it, we will get nowhere. If we accept the advice of the hon. Member for Hamilton, we might as well not bother to come here, because it will all be a waste of time. Everything he said was bogus because, if Labour Members had turned up, they could have won the vote, and Scotland would have had a ban. That might have made life slightly easier for those south of the border affected by the Bill.

The Government have a big problem. They wanted to reach a compromise. I am sure that there was a violent discussion about it in the Cabinet, in which no doubt my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary was on the right side and some others may have been on the wrong side. With a partial ban, gun clubs will find it impossible to continue, and the public will be put at risk.

The Southend pistol and gun club, of which I have never been a member, is in my constituency. I called to see the members for the first time recently. They are delightful people. There are not many of them, and they have to pay quite a bit for the sport they are engaged in. How on earth will they pay for the storage that will be needed for all the weapons? It will be virtually impossible.

Although I do not blame my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, he must be aware that the Cabinet's unusual decision will mean that guns will be available only to the very wealthy, perhaps in exclusive clubs such as the House of Commons--we have a club here, of course, and all these wealthy people. The sport will be denied to everyone else.

Ministers should listen to sensible people such as my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside. As I have said, the last vote was the first time in my life that I had gone into a different Lobby from him, simply because of my outrage at what the hon. Member for Hamilton said. We must look for a solution.

We must also remember public safety. I am sure that the Cabinet tried to get the right answer when arriving at their unusual decision, but they do not appreciate that they

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are creating a major public safety problem. Unless we dig a hole 60 ft down with steel 6 ft thick all round it, we cannot have real security for the weapons, because there are so many rascals these days.

Although crime is going down for the first time in living memory because of the splendid and active policies of my right hon. and learned Friend, the plain fact is that we still have a lot of criminals. From the contacts that he must have, my right hon. and learned Friend must be well aware that criminals are becoming cleverer and more able, finding different ways to do things that criminals in the old days did not even think of. They will find a way round a big lock or a security system that does not work. I am scared that the system of storage at clubs will be a real security danger. It will require massive expenditure that average clubs will not be able to afford.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin), who has argued well for his amendments, suggested that we should go for partial storage. He pointed out that the arguments against that were bogus. I have suggested a compromise. Accepting amendment No. 63 would leave the way open for my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to consider whether there might be a case for partial storage, and a way of overcoming the arguments that have been put forward against it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary should be free to consider partial storage if he thinks that it is right.

Can partial storage work? We all know it can. What are the arguments against it? One seems to be that a clever chap with a gun could have two parts of the gun instead of one to take away--he could have another one at home. That is not a very sensible argument, because I think that we are aware that, if that were so, he would have two guns--one in the club and one at home. Such an argument applies to illegal weapons and illegal possession at the present time. I do not think that that is a very strong argument.