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4.9 pm
Mr. Peter Brooke (City of London and Westminster, South): As my right hon. Friend the Minister--it is a great pleasure to address her in that way--will recall, I was not called to speak on the original guillotine motion. I do not complain about that; I was sitting where the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), usually sits, and I understand completely why I was overlooked.
On that occasion, I would have followed my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) in the debate, and I would have spoken about the effect on people who are following the proceedings on the Bill of the speed with which a series of guillotine motions have obliged us to consider it.
I remonstrated thereafter with an hon. Friend--whom I shall anonymously call a representative of the business managers--that we had insufficient time in which to debate the matters properly. He said that no one else had made that complaint. Our conversation occurred before Third Reading, when I know for certain that several hon. Members--including me, incidentally--were kept out of the debate.
More seriously, I recall the debate on compensation. I mentioned the matter on Report, and I do so again now because of the debate that we shall have this evening. About 10 minutes before the end of the debate on Report, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary--I do not accuse him of having orchestrated the scenario deliberately--declined to give way to an hon. Friend who sought to intervene, on the ground that he did not have sufficient time. It is ironic that the guillotine motion should have the effect of saving my right hon. and learned Friend from the obligation of replying properly to the debate.
We shall have the compensation debate this evening. I do not share the advantage of the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) or of the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale(Sir D. Steel) in having seen the 14-page document. The good news is that I calculate that we will have an hour and a quarter for the compensation debate rather than 45 minutes, so we shall have slightly more time in which to absorb the details.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the document, which was courteously sent to some hon. Members who participated in the debate, opens Pandora's box.
Mr. Brooke:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that comment, and I anticipate reading the document all the more. I simply repeat that, given the interest that the public have expressed in these matters, it is unfortunate that we should give the impression that we are rushing them through without proper consideration.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
The Minister very courteously sent this letter to me today. It states:
We have received no clear answer--at least I have not heard it--to a question posed by the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) and many others as to who
would do that evaluation. There is cheerful talk about evaluation, but precisely who will do it? The idea that it will be agreed easily and automatically is fairyland.
What about paragraph 14, on ex gratia payments? The letter states:
The list that accompanies the letter purports to give valuations on a range of guns--for example, the Astra 3 in barrel, the Colt new service and the Colt diamond back 6 in. I was told off the cuff today, just after receiving the document, that the figures given for valuation are totally unrealistic. For example, the Cold diamond back 6 in is valued at £235, but I have been told that we are talking about thousands if the owner's perceived valuation is to be gone along with. Owners will challenge the valuations.
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet):
I have not spoken in these debates before, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I hope that you will allow me a few minutes in which to explain why I am so deeply concerned about the manner in which the debate on an extremely important piece of legislation is about to be truncated, if the House wills it so. Clearly, there will not be time for the consideration of amendments that might mitigate what will become an appalling piece of legislation if it goes through unamended.
The hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) sought an answer to the question, "How would we feel if . . . ?" and then related the experience of two of his constituents and their appalling loss. I am the parent of three children; I have had the pleasure of watching them grow to maturity and I freely concede that I cannot begin to comprehend the anguish of the parents of Dunblane. Most of those who say, "I know how you feel," are, in my view, guilty of uttering an obscene platitude. Thank God, there are few hon. Members who have suffered anything like that sort of experience and can therefore begin to understand how others feel.
The House must do all it can to pass legislation that seeks to mitigate the possibility of a tragedy like Dunblane happening again, but we all know that in a world of madmen, whatever we do in this House cannot prevent that. Like many other hon. Members, I started out with high hopes that we would achieve something positive with the Bill, but I am concerned that the Bill will do nothing to prevent a similar recurrence and that it will do that nothing at vast expense and at great cost to an enormous number of respectable and responsible people.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), during the months that the Bill has been passing through Parliament, I have had time to realise that it is knee-jerk legislation that will go down in the annals of the House of Commons as second only to the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 in its appalling misconception and haste. As before, we have seen the House at its worst--when it combines to take a cross-party "I care more than you do" approach and rushes a measure through as a sop to an appalling event.
I am not a shooter--I have only ever handled a gun on military service and on the rare occasions when I have missed clay pigeons for the benefit of charity--so I have no personal vested interest in the subject. However, I have spoken to some of my constituents who are members of Swalecliffe gun club, which is located in Herne Bay in my constituency. Following a meeting with them at the end of October 1996, I wrote to the Home Secretary on 2 November 1996, asking a series of questions related directly to the compensation issues that we are about to timetable.
The Minister of State replied to me yesterday. Let me make it plain that I am grateful to her, first for the courteous nature of her reply and, secondly, for turning that reply round within about 12 hours of the letter landing on her desk. However, it has taken some months for me to receive these replies.
I raised the specific issue of what would happen to .22 pistols belonging to members of gun clubs that would go out of existence, and who would therefore have nowhere to go with them, and I asked what compensation those people would receive. I was told--hon. Members who know more about the subject than I do may be aware of this already:
4.12 pm
"I am enclosing for your information a copy of a consultation document which sets out our proposals for the detailed arrangements for the firearms compensation scheme to be introduced under the Firearms (Amendment) Bill. The document will be used as a basis for consultation by the Home Office with the police and shooting organisations. I am sending copies to all those who participated when the issue of compensation was debated on the Floor of the House. A copy is also being placed in the Library".
Why did that letter arrive after lunch on 18 February--the day that we are debating the matter? Even at first glance, there are all sorts of questions to be asked. It would be improper to abuse a debate on the timetable by asking too many detailed questions. However, before we limit ourselves to three quarters of an hour of debating time, I refer to options B and C. Option B is payment based on a price contained in a published list of values and option C is payment based on individual valuation.
"He could either choose to lodge his pistol with the police pending its retrieval for use in an approved club, or he could choose to surrender ownership straight away and seek an ex gratia payment for it at the same time as any claim for compensation in respect of higher calibre guns is made."
Who will decide that ex gratia payment? We are talking about a great deal of money.
"As most clubs will be unable to comply with the security requirements, initially, it is intended that the police will retain the .22 pistols in safe storage for those who are seeking a club. The time these will be retained has yet to be set, but we expect it to be a matter of years rather than months in order to give clubs time to adapt to the new requirements."
However, my right hon. Friend continues:
"In most cases, this will require the construction of a purpose-built secure range rather than the adaptation of existing ranges. Rather than a number of local ranges and small clubs, it is expected that ranges, and probably clubs, will be organised at a county or regional level. The cost of security arrangements for each club would thus be shared among a more substantial number of shooters. Members of such clubs may have to travel considerable distances to shoot, but in this respect .22 shooting will be similar to ice-skating and other sports where appropriate facilities are rare and concentrated in large towns."
If amendment No. 27 is passed tonight, the members of Swalecliffe gun club, and no doubt others represented by hon. Members on both sides of the House, will lose their facilities, and the fruits of the hard work that they have put in, without compensation--and because that amendment is one of a group of four, we shall not have more than about 45 minutes in which to raise those issues.
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