| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Howard: If the balance being struck was as the hon. Lady described, she would be entirely right. Would she not accept, however, that the first thing that must be established is that this proposed legislation will increase the protection of the public? In the absence of any compelling evidence that it will, it is legitimate to examine the other consequences of the Bill if it is enacted. That is the point.
Mr. Frank Cook: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not the convention of the House that no intervention is made during a maiden speech?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Lady is not making a maiden speech.
Mrs. McGuire: I thought that I made that clear at the beginning of my remarks.
I take up the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the shadow Home Secretary. I said at the beginning of my speech that today's debate was an extension of the one that took place earlier this year when the previous Government introduced a bad piece of legislation. I hope that tonight we shall see a real conclusion to the debate on guns and not the half-baked one that we had earlier in the year.
Mr. Ernie Ross (Dundee, West):
I was a Member of this place when, earlier in the year, it discussed the possession of handguns. I hoped that the Select Committee on Home Affairs would be able to give some guidance to the House. I remember the shock and horror following publication of the Select Committee report--it was forced through by Conservative Members--that opposed a total ban on handguns. I remember how that impacted on the people in Dundee whom I represent. Over the following six or seven weeks, a petition was organised in Dundee calling for a total ban on handguns to be introduced by the then Parliament. Over a short period, 6,000 people signed that petition. It was presented to my hon. Friend's predecessor, the then Secretary of State for Scotland, who did not even bother to reply. That illustrates the real reason why we got it wrong earlier. The then Government just did not care. They did not listen.
Mrs. McGuire:
I agree with my hon. Friend. I suggest that many Conservative Members are entirely out of touch with the aspirations and wishes of ordinary people, which were reflected by my hon. Friend's constituents.
I recognise the wish of sports people to compete. I recognise also that they have rights in a democratic society. I assert, however, that their rights cannot and
should not be put above the rights of others. I regret that their liberties will be infringed, but not as much as I regret the deaths of 16 children and their teacher in Dunblane on 13 March.
Life choices are still in front of the sports people who will have to give up pistol shooting. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, they can take up other shooting disciplines. They can take up hurdling, for example. They can do all sorts of other things and win gold medals for us in sports where those medals have not been won before. There are no choices left for the children who were killed in Dunblane or for the people killed in Hungerford.
One of the most moving comments that I heard was made by the mother of Mhairi Macbeth on the "Panorama" programme. She said that the tragedy was that she could not see the end of her child's story. I hope that today we can draw an end to the stories of those children who were killed.
We can be criticised for having an emotional response to what has happened. It is, however, an emotional issue when young people are shot down. Our emotional response is linked to a logical response, and that is to remove all handguns from our society.
Events, no matter how tragic, can often be used as a springboard to create a better world. That is our opportunity today, an opportunity which was missed earlier. Nothing can bring back the dead children and adults of Dunblane and Hungerford, but, by moving to extend the handgun ban, we can keep faith with them, with their families and with communities across Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole who signed the Snowdrop petition and other petitions.
Sir Nicholas Lyell (North-East Bedfordshire):
The House will recognise that we have heard an utterly sincere speech from the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), who represents Dunblane, which was devastated by the shooting tragedy. The hon. Lady and the Home Secretary have both recognised and sympathised with the shooters whose rights we shall take away. Both have recognised also that there must be a principle on which we base our approach. The principle has to be that it is necessary in the public interest, in this instance for the enhancement of public safety, to make the change that is set out in the Bill and that the Bill requires.
I listened most carefully to the Home Secretary's speech and I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for seeking to intervene a second time. I wished only to highlight the point I am about to make. He did not really respond to the question whether the total banning of handguns, including the lighter .22 handguns, is necessary for public safety and whether it will significantly enhance public safety. I do not believe that that case has been made out.
The House recognises--the Home Secretary acknowledged this--that, even if we were to ban every gun in this country, including shotguns and rifles, and
even if we were to ban kitchen knives, we could not guarantee that the single-minded loner would never create an atrocity of the sort that we saw at Dunblane. It is not necessary to labour the point unduly, but it is one worth making. A gun does not have to feature in an atrocity. Poisons, although properly restricted, are obtainable; they are necessary, for example, in agriculture. An atrocity could occur through their use. As we know, tragically, from terrorism, it would be all to easy with the use of fertilisers, and household substances as simple as sugar, to destroy just as many lives in a moment of evil-minded atrocity. The same would be true--indeed, we very nearly saw it--of a machete. When dealing with small children, it is all too easy to kill.
The question that the House must address--I was deeply saddened that the Prime Minister allowed it to be raised in such a simplistic way at the end of Prime Minister's questions--is whether this measure is necessary and proportionate--
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
The hon. Lady says yes, but please address the issues.
Is the Bill really necessary and proportionate to protect the citizens of this country? I believe--I do not criticise the sincerity of any hon. Member--that the Bill is, understandably, an emotional response, which still remains following the horrific tragedy of Dunblane; but that does not make the case. The Prime Minister himself has said that he believes that the House has a moral responsibility to pass the Bill and that he has a personal belief, but neither he nor the Home Secretary has really addressed and made out the positive reasons for the ban.
One can become rather saddened in the House sometimes when there is a mood such as this. I am grateful to the hon. Members on the Government Benches who are here to take part in the debate, but most hon. Members will come and vote on a free vote not having heard the arguments. The very fact that the Government thought it right to make this a free vote points up the principle that I am highlighting. If the Government really believed that this measure is necessary and proportionate in the public interest, they would make it a Government measure. They would not simply leave it to a free vote, because--the Home Secretary is chatting to his hon. Friend, but he is serious minded about this--the Government say that they recognise that they have a duty to protect the rights of minorities. Unless the Government can show that passing this measure will significantly enhance the safety of the people of this country, they should not encourage their supporters and should not seek to persuade the House to pass this measure through a Government Bill. What happens on private Members' Bills is an entirely different matter.
I shall conclude by making one positive point and then give a summary. There is a very positive reason for not banning .22 pistols used by club members for target shooting. Properly monitored clubs are close-knit communities of highly responsible people. Every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate will probably recognise that. Such clubs exist in my constituency.
There are also small businesses--I know of one, to which I go from time to time because I shoot with a shotgun--that run pistol shooting in a highly responsible
way. Those bodies monitor their members far more effectively than the police could ever be expected to do and provide a positive defence against oddballs such as Ryan and Hamilton--who were very odd indeed. Those bodies would be far more likely to spot such people and, if necessary, report them, rather than leaving it to an unfortunate police officer--I have the greatest sympathy with the police involved here--and asking the officer to deal with it on paper; and they would do that, not least because if any member of their club were to behave irresponsibly, he would endanger the licence of the club itself.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |