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Mr. Austin Mitchell: I rise, as an invisible signatory to amendment No. 58, to support it. I do so faute de mieux, because unfortunately, through some strange aberration or oversight, my own much more subtle and effective amendments were not selected for discussion. Although I have managed to fill the amendment paper with amendments, we have seen a massacre of the innocents. My pauvre bonnes pensees have all disappeared.

The purpose of my amendments--in common with amendment No. 59, although it is much more limited--was to ban all weapons that could not be dismantled, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) said, is only a small number of handguns, and

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to require all other weapons to be dismantled, the weightier part--although I found that concept difficult to put in legislative terms--to be stored at the gun club and the other part taken home. That would give us what we have been arguing for all along--a total ban on assembled, working weapons outside gun clubs.

Thomas Hamilton's actions in Dunblane would have been impossible, because no working, assembled weapons would have been allowed outside gun clubs. If assembled weapons were seen outside, they would be ipso facto--automatically--illegal and illicit and could be dealt with as such. That is a clear, simple, straightforward proposition and its rationality appealed to me, as it appealed to Lord Cullen.

Unfortunately, our judges are too diffident. They do not realise that they must be tougher and more direct with politicians and say what they are going to say, say it and then tell us what they have said. If they approached the task in that way, they might have some hope of getting through to us. But the judge is this case was too subtle. The approach in the amendment was his preferred approach, but he did not take it any further.

The civil servants in the Box know that the amendment embodies a more effective approach. Everybody knows it is a much more effective approach, but the Government wanted a grand gesture. Why? They wanted it because of the tide of feeling in Scotland and because of the threat to the seat of the Secretary of State for Scotland. They wanted a big, simple gesture in the face of that tide of opinion in Scotland. The virtue of achieving their aim in a more direct, rational, effective, cheap and less pernicious way never seemed to occur to the Government. The Labour party wanted an even grander gesture.

The tide of opinion in Scotland has been the motivating force and the dynamic behind the legislation, and was the reason why I voted for new clause 1. If Scotland wants a total ban, Scotland should have a total ban. But the general principle that we must emphasise in connection with these dismantling proposals is simple. Legislation made under strong emotional pressure and backed by a highly emotional campaign--which is understandable I do not criticise it for that--is in danger of being bad legislation or a bit of a mess, as the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) told us several times. Legislation made in such a situation is bound to be a bit of a mess.

Dismantling would give us all that those on both sides of the House want, simply and straightforwardly, and allow the sport of handgun shooting to continue. I do not see why people who enjoy that sport should not be allowed to continue it if they can do so in licensed, controlled premises, safely and without the guns going outside. Dismantling would allow that and it would also avoid the horrendous problem of compensation.

I have heard the amount mentioned for compensation rise from a starting point of £25 million to £300 million today. I know of no other issue on which the Government, with gay abandon, would sling around millions of quid like that. The parsimonious, Scrooge-like Government who hate to spend a bawbee or a groat are prepared to sling away, unnecessarily, £300 million in compensation. It may well be more, of course--the Home Secretary is

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right to nod in that warning fashion. It is true. I agree with him, because we do not know the size of the bill that we are taking on.

There would be no need to take it on at all if my proposal were accepted. Why should we pay that massive bill for compensation, while the security problem remains? When the Government legislation is passed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North said, more guns will be stored in fewer premises--a concentration that will inevitably attract raids.

The art of ram raiding, which is spreading down the country from the north-east, where its most skilled practitioners have taken it to a fine art, will be a threat to gun clubs in which whole weapons are stored. They need not be stored in that fashion; they could simply be dismantled, and all that the ram raiders would get in return for what I hope would be extensive damage to their vehicle--their tank, their milk-float, or whatever--would be parts of weapons.

9.45 pm

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): My hon. Friend gave the tentative figure of £300 million. Does he accept that the figure that I have been given by someone who really knows about guns and valuation is at least £1,200 million?

Mr. Howard indicated dissent.

Mr. Dalyell: The Home Secretary shakes his head, but when my hon. Friend has finished his speech it will be interesting to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman's figure.

Mr. Mitchell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he is right to say that the bill will escalate in that fashion. When we embark on legislation, we should know what the bill will be at the end of it. If we had known the scale of the bill, perhaps we would have been more enthusiastic and concerned about the dismantling proposal, which would not have required the bill to be paid.

If the Home Secretary had been able to give us a realistic calculation, it would have strengthened the arguments for the kind of dismantling that Lord Cullen, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin) and I have proposed. We would not then be fighting a last-ditch rearguard action in the hope that the House of Lords will come to the rescue of the beleaguered advocates of common sense in the Chamber. That is an unusual situation, but there we are.

My proposal for dismantling all weapons, as an alternative to a total ban, was not agreed. I must tell the Home Secretary that I had not intended to go as deeply into the issue as I have done. I do not like guns or shooting. Several years ago, when we were discussing the post-Hungerford legislation, I went down to the pistol and gun club for the one and only time. I was terrified to hold one of those things and point it at a target. It was a worse ordeal than speaking in the House, and that in itself is pretty awful. I do not like the whole business, and I did not intend to get involved in it; but, having seen that we were going down what I think is the wrong path, I believe that it is essential, even at this late stage, to put the argument for rationality.

Anyway, it is no use crying over spilt amendments. They are gone, more's the pity. We now have amendment No. 58, which is much more limited in scale. It offers an

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alternative method of storage and says to the Government, "You have got what you want. You have got your grand gesture--your ban on all weapons bigger than .22. Now let us approach the last remaining step--a sensible proposal for storing the weapons safely, by requiring them to be dismantled."

The amendment does not offer the grandiose prospect that I held out, of dealing with the problem in a more simple and straightforward way. It is simply a sensible storage suggestion for the Government, and I cannot understand why they will not accept it. Perhaps it undermines the validity of the gesture that they made in the first place, by attempting to ban weapons bigger than .22.

Let me not venture off into abnormal psychology. I shall never hope to understand this Government, or the rationality of Ministers. None the less, I would like them to consider the more limited proposal for safe storage of weapons, because it would avoid the obvious danger. Perhaps it could serve as a beachhead to build on, and to push the process of developing common sense, which we should have pushed earlier.

I hope, therefore, that the Government--[Interruption.] The Home Secretary looks as if he is longing to leap to his feet to accept my argument. If he wants to do so now, in the middle of my speech, I shall give him the opportunity. I hope that he will consider the dismantling issue more seriously than he has done up to now.

The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare moved the amendment in a sensible, cautious, moderate, sound, well-argued and well-advocated manner, and I hope that he pushes it to a vote. I think that the House should be allowed to vote on the issue of dismantling, as numerous people have come up to me and said, "That is not a bad idea. Why didn't we think of it?" They had not read the Cullen report. People are beginning to come around to the idea of dismantling weapons. It would be useful if the Lords could discuss the Bill in the knowledge that this House was slowly coming around to sense but that, because of the rush of legislation, we had not got there yet.

Mr. Peter Brooke (City of London and Westminster, South): I shall be extremely brief, because of the Procrustean nature of the guillotine under which we are operating. A guillotine is a good way of preventing a filibuster--which nobody has threatened during debates on this Bill--but it frankly gets in the way of constructive debate. I am not sure whether I am supposed to declare an interest but, in effect, my only shooting has been done with a .22 as an Army cadet and with a .303 in the Army, where, thanks to tuition rather to any innate skill of my own, I became a first-class shot. On only three other occasions have I shot at all, twice with pistols.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin) has spoken of the technicalities of the amendment, and I do not propose to use up the time of the House in reiterating those. My preoccupation, as evidenced by my interventions during the debate in Committee on the Floor of the House, is with those who shoot at county, regional, national and international level. The amendments that could be beneficial to them have a potentially wider application among other pursuers of target shooting.

The restrictions on particular pistols contained in the Bill are supported by the argument that they will allow our nation to continue to compete in Olympic shooting.

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However, that is an empty argument if those who would represent us cannot have the opportunity to train at international levels. We heard earlier this evening about how going beyond Cullen enlarged the need for compensation, and the amendment returns indirectly to that issue.

I have written to my hon. Friend the Minister of State--in line with my comments in Committee on the Floor of the House--about the training regime that those who shoot at international level have to pursue. Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank her for the promptness of her reply, although she gave me little comfort on the main issue. Given the rest of the Bill, a key consideration as to whether our international competitors can continue to train will be how many clubs are able to remain open--as the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) said--when they have to meet the capital upgrading costs required in the Bill.

If the clubs shrink in number, the time involved in getting to one's club will become more of an obstacle to training. One cannot tell a competitor simply to move, for his or her job may not allow him or her to do so. Thus, the potential solution to the problem of the need to keep one's pistol at an upgraded club, which was offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare, becomes a matter of great importance.

There is a further dimension. In my letter to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, I alluded--as I did in Committee--to that element of training which at the highest level is technically called kinaesthetic, which represents 80 per cent. of the training at the highest level. It is done without shooting and can be conducted at home, thus hugely simplifying training if it has to be done daily and if the individual's club is open only twice a week. Although one cannot do all the kinaesthetic training without the missing part to which the amendment refers, one could do part of it in that manner. This solution, if viable, would go a long way towards solving a crucial problem at national and international level. That is a further argument in support of the amendment.

I must tell my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and his Treasury Bench colleagues that, if we do not find a way around these critical training problems, they run the risk of dancing on the grave of British performance in international shooting.

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