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Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West): The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) started it.

Mr. Cunningham: It is no good the hon. Gentleman trying to heckle. He cannot take it when someone gives it back to him. I hope that Tory Members will put the people first and their pride second, and that they will recognise that this is a serious attempt by Labour to do something about the problem. I equally hope that Tory Members will not start to play their little games in Committee. I for one support the Bill and commend it to the House.

11.5 am

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): I welcome the Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) on producing a sensible measure, limited

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though it might be. I welcome generally the sense with which he has brought it forward. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Cunningham) must have been sleeping during the speech of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), as that is where the party politics started. The hon. Gentleman has tried to score points on a measure that is agreed by everyone here. Obviously, Labour is trying to make political capital out of what should be a sensible, agreed and consensual measure.

Mr. Michael: Will the hon. Gentleman bear it in mind that we have been trying to get such a measure in law for some eight years, but that he and his Conservative colleagues have opposed it? It would be surprising if we were not to remind him and his hon. Friends of that fact.

Mr. Robathan: I will accept what he says if he will read Hansard from approximately 1970, because he will find that the position of the Labour party was clear and consistent until recently, when it decided that it should perhaps be more on the side of the police than anti-police.

Mr. Maclean: My hon. Friend is right to point out that the sordid politics was introduced by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael)this morning, and not by me. The hon. Gentleman boasts about Labour proposals in 1988, but it tabled an amendment on the matter that it failed to vote on, and then voted against the whole Bill.

Mr. Robathan: I am grateful for my right hon. Friend's assistance.

I wish to refer to the issue of culture, which has been raised by many hon. Members before. The culture of our society is most important. We shall not be able to prevent young men from carrying knives without introducing the most draconian measures, which no one would wish to see. We must alter our culture, and that is where Mrs. Lawrence's campaign has come from. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Provan nodding, because I think we can agree on this.

A culture of violence has developed--a culture of Rambo and Schwarzenegger films, and others which, luckily, I have not seen and on which I cannot comment in too much detail. These films come on late at night and, if one is not careful, one can end up watching them on television at midnight. Violence has crept into our culture in the past 20 or 30 years, but knife crime is not new. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East comes from the middle part of Scotland, and I was always told that the gangs in the Gorbals of the 1930s and 1950s used razors.

Mr. Jim Cunningham: I must put the hon. Gentleman right. I mean no disrespect to the people of Glasgow, but I do not come from that city. I come from a place that also had experience of gangs. I was talking specifically about the problems in Coventry, although this is a national problem. I hope that the hon. Gentleman was not sleeping and has been listening.

Mr. Robathan: I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not think that I was trying to slag him off. On this occasion, I was not. I was suggesting that knives are not

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new. There have been gangs with knives or razors--mods and rockers and teddy boys. Perhaps they were clamped down on more carefully, but more importantly, carrying knives was not the general culture of our young people, but was limited to gangs and certain areas.

The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth also mentioned war imagery, and he is right. I probably know a little more about that then most, having spent 15 years in the Army and having used knives from time to time. I never cut anyone else with a knife but, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring), I have succeeded in cutting myself.

It is extraordinarily difficult to define the sort of knives that we are discussing. The hon. Member for Provan referred to the use of a machete in the recent ghastly attack at an infants' school as "like cutting corn". We must avoid becoming too simplistic, because that is exactly the problem. That is a bizarre case, in which one can envisage ploughshares and wheat scythes being turned into swords.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds said that he had two souvenirs from Oman. When I was a boy scout, I had a sheath knife, which I was told at the time would count as an offensive weapon as it was approximately 5 in long. I think that it is still in a cupboard somewhere. It was not an offensive weapon, but it could easily have become one.

I also have somewhere in a cupboard a Japanese sword that my father brought back from the war. It could certainly be used as an offensive weapon, but it was not designed to be so. The worst weapons, however, are probably the collection of kitchen knives that, my wife bought for our new house. I have some experience of military matters, as I said, and I fear that if people were looking for a sharp, unpleasant and easily concealed weapon, they would choose one of those knives.

Mr. Piers Merchant (Beckenham): They do.

Mr. Robathan: Yes, because the knives are lethal and sharp. I raised that matter not to make a petty point but because the fundamental thing is to change our culture so that people will not go out with a kitchen knife, one of these absurd combat knives or whatever.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Provan again as, in the Bill, we are developing a common-sense test--that an SAS combat knife, a Terminator or whatever it may be called, cannot be used for ordinary, legitimate reasons and should therefore be banned. That is right and proper.

The culture extends to the police. The past 30-odd years have been significant. Once upon a time, the police had more respect from the general public. There are many reasons why they have lost that respect; sometimes it has been their own fault, I accept, but largely they were undermined by people who fought a civil liberties campaign saying that the police were generally ill disposed towards young people, young people in groups, ethnic minorities and so forth.

Mention was made of the sus laws--I remember the campaign against them getting on for 20 years ago, and I believe that the Vagrancy Acts and the other legislation were changed after a royal commission--and I was reminded of listening to the man from Liberty. It was said that the police were using the law to discriminate against ethnic minorities and bully young people. My impression

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of the police is that, although some of them may be bullies, in general they are not ill disposed towards anyone. They are genuinely trying to protect society.

We are turning back the tide by going against the permissive and civil liberties culture that led us to say that the police should be given no powers because everyone is basically decent and honest and does not need to be stopped and searched. The stop-and-search power in the Bill is crucial. One cannot stop someone carrying a knife if they can conceal it. One has to be able to stop and search people, for example, at football grounds, outside schools or if some drunken gang is harassing people in the street at midnight. The police must be able to search such people.

The headlines in several newspapers today concern drugs again and two unfortunate teenagers, who I understand committed suicide. The police could also search for drugs. Surely the connection between drugs and violence, and alcohol and violence, I freely admit, is well established. We must understand that we have to give the police those powers.

I want the culture of permissiveness--perhaps that is not quite the right word and I should call it the culture of civil liberties--that was so anti-police to be turned back. We need to develop a culture that supports the police. The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam), in a moving speech, mentioned one of his constituents who was murdered. We must have a culture in which, if we see a policeman in trouble, we do not turn our backs or cross to the other side of the street, but we help or ensure that the policeman gets help from other policemen if not from ourselves.

As Mrs. Lawrence said so sensibly, we also need to teach the difference between right and wrong in every school, rather than hoping that in some strange way children will absorb that message from watching far too much television.

Mr. Michael: The hon. Gentleman is making a good and thoughtful contribution to the debate. Does he acknowledge that the request by the police, and particularly the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, is to have powers that will enable them to intervene to protect the public as necessary, without excessively infringing civil liberties and undermining public confidence? Does he agree that that balance has to be achieved?

Mr. Robathan: I am delighted to agree, because we need a balance. Often, particularly in party politics, we go one way or the other too quickly. The hon. Gentleman may agree that, in the 1960s and early 1970s, the pendulum swung too far. Perhaps, if we had managed to contain the swinging, we would be in less trouble now.

In my time in the armed forces, I went to too many funerals. People were killed in Ireland and some were killed in accidents. About five and a half years ago, shortly before I was elected, I attended the funeral of a young man I knew well, who had been knifed in a park on Chadwell heath. Drugs were involved. No one knew exactly what had happened, but it was suggested that the young man who knifed him was carrying drugs and attacked because of some dispute. The young man who was killed was charming and the apple of his parents' eye--his father was a policeman, in fact. I am sure that we all have tales of similar tragedies, which show that we must change this culture.

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I do not want to make a party political point on this. The hon. Member for Blaydon made a good and sensible speech. He talked about a civilised society. I hope that we can all agree that a civilised society is not one in which anyone would normally carry a knife unless for some sensible reason.

Let me return to my point about permissiveness. I recall the then Home Secretary in 1966 saying that the permissive society was a civilised society. No Liberal Democrat Members are here and that Home Secretary is now a noble Lord speaking for the Liberal Democrats in the other place. We must turn back that culture and get it right. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Provan has come forward with this Bill and that we can have a sense of balance, as the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth said.

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