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8.8 pm
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South): First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) on a splendid and memorable first speech. Dickens might have found a spiritual home in the proud city of Portsmouth. He was born in the city, a fact of which we are extremely proud.
I am probably unknown to many Members, but I think that it is 10 years ago to the day that I was last a Member of this place.
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock):
Where is David Owen now?
Mr. Hancock:
That is a good point: if the hon. Member knows, there are others who want to know.
I pay tribute to my predecessor. I thank him on behalf of the people of Portsmouth, South for the efforts that he put in on their behalf. I am sure that David Martin will be remembered by those for whom he worked. As I have said, he put in a great deal of effort on behalf of many people. I know that from correspondence that I have received since 1 May. I wish him and his family all the best for the future.
I am delighted to speak after a Member representing another naval constituency. It was nice to hear Chatham spoken of in such dignified terms. I speak as one who represents the finest of all British cities; I hate to contradict the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), who made his maiden speech yesterday, but I am sure that, when he spoke of the fair city of Lancaster, he forgot to include Portsmouth in what he judged to be the country's finest cities.
I am very happy to represent Portsmouth, South again. I had the privilege and pleasure of serving the constituency some 10 years ago, and well remember the opportunities that that afforded me to speak on behalf of the people of Portsmouth. Much has changed in the intervening time, however.
We in Portsmouth have struggled to come to terms with the rundown of the defence industries, and have fought magnificently to rekindle enthusiasm within the city for its future. We look forward with great expectation to the developments associated with our gaining of Millennium Commission support for a major project in our city. I am sure that the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Rapson) will join me in wishing Portsmouth all the best, in the hope that those endeavours will come to fruition in time for them to be celebrated in the millennium year. We trust that the whole nation will share in the occasion.
We also celebrate the success of our football team, led and managed by Mr. Terry Venables--who no doubt will bring much enjoyment to Portsmouth if he succeeds in
bringing players from down under to play at Fratton Park in the coming season, delivering the success that we have been narrowly denied during the past three or four years.
Portsmouth is a very special place. It is a cosmopolitan city; it is the home of the Royal Navy, and of one of the United Kingdom's newest universities. It has contributed to the history of the nation for 2,000 years, and it is incredibly proud of those traditions. Only last week, we unveiled a statue of one of the United Kingdom's greatest heroes, Lord Montgomery, on our seafront, and in a few days' time we shall celebrate the success of our task force in the Falklands war. Portsmouth needs to be represented well in this place. That is why it is important for the voice of its people to be heard in regard to the issue that we are discussing.
I congratulate the Home Secretary on the courageous way in which he presented the Bill today: I am sure that he could have found an easier way--he could have run away from some of the difficult points that were put to him--but he denied no interruption, and gave hon. Members every opportunity to put him on the spot in regard to sporting issues. I heard him say that he had been assured that the Commonwealth games would not be threatened by the legislation, and I accept that he had researched that. He also promised that he would look into the position regarding the Olympic games.
I must declare an interest: I have a firearms certificate, and have had one for a long time. I have fired pistols and rifles for nearly two decades. I have enjoyed the hospitality, friendship and comradeship of shooters in this country and abroad, and have enjoyed the privilege and pleasure of shooting on many ranges in this country. I have done that in the knowledge that I was enjoying a sport--but I have not fired a gun since the Dunblane massacre. This morning, before coming to the House, I handed my last firearm in to the Portsmouth police station.
I have my current firearms certificate with me. It is quite interesting. I am sure that not many of my constituents are aware that it was--and legally still is--possible for me to possess five weapons, all of them capable of killing people. I could have had nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition in my home at any one time, but I am glad to say that I now have none of those things. I handed in my last weapon today, because anyone speaking in a debate such as this becomes extremely vulnerable as soon as he says that he owns guns. His property becomes vulnerable to people who would use an opportunity to gain access to a weapon.
We should all be concerned about the fact that 500 legally owned guns were stolen in the last year for which statistics exist. People may think that their weapons are secure. They may do what I did, and break weapons down, storing ammunition and pistols in separate containers and in different parts of the house. But they can never be sure that a chance burglary will not happen--or, indeed, a premeditated burglary. The burglar may know that someone is a gun enthusiast.
Since Dunblane, however, I have been unable to bring myself to support the idea that anything other than a total ban would be acceptable to the British people. Given that, according to the latest poll, 83 per cent. of people support such a ban, I cannot conceive that there is now any excuse
for us to do other than support the Bill. I say that with a great deal of heartache: I feel sad for people who have enjoyed the sport for much longer than I have--the people who offered me friendship, and encouraged me to use their weapons and ranges to enjoy the sport of shooting. I know what a wrench it will be for them to be denied that opportunity.
Many disabled people have found that shooting is the one thing that makes them live again. I have met a number of those people, and have recently presented awards to some of them. I have also helped to develop the techniques used by some whose ambition is to learn to shoot. However, there are other ways in which such people can develop their potential. Their weapons will not be outlawed. I am sure that many paraplegics will turn to air weapons if they still want to shoot.
I am not at all worried that we as a nation will be forbidden to bid for future major sporting events, and I think that it is a travesty to suggest that that in itself would be a good reason not to ban weapons. I commend the Home Secretary for defending his position so forthrightly today.
The police will have less of a burden. They will not have to deal with the day-to-day routine tasks that the last Government's legislation would have increased dramatically. As the Home Secretary pointed out, the Bill will enable the police to devote more energy to ridding the nation of illegally held weapons, and of people who systematically peddle weapons. There will be no excuse now, because, after the three-month handing-in period, all legally held weapons should no longer be available.
I thought it unforgivable that the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), should suggest that legitimate gun owners would go underground. I considered that a slur of the worst possible kind, and, as a firearms certificate holder, I took offence personally. How outrageous it was that the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not refer to public safety as an important factor. He found every excuse under the sun for not recommending the Bill, but not once did he address the issue of whether we would live in a safer nation if we banned handguns. I found that a sad and startling omission.
I was also disappointed that so many Conservative Members tried to hide the true issue by supporting shooting activities among the disabled. I felt that that undersold and undervalued their contribution, and I thought it sad that Conservative Members had sunk to such a level, given that the nation had demanded that Parliament balance the issues carefully and then decide.
I have no hesitation in giving the Bill my whole-hearted support. It is right, proper and long overdue. An opportunity was missed, not last year but after Hungerford. That is when the true tragedy of Dunblane occurred. With hindsight, it just may be that we can look back and say that, if only we had seized that opportunity--it is a big if--Dunblane might not have happened.
Mr. Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley):
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me. I had not intended to speak. I was looking forward to making my maiden speech on a subject which I knew rather more about, possibly the arcane workings of local government finance, or some such thing. But because the Commonwealth games and the Olympic games have been mentioned so much, about which I know quite a lot, having led, with Sir Bob Scott, Britain's bid for the Olympics in 1996 and 2000, and having led the successful English bid for the Commonwealth games in 2002, I decided to try to participate.
First, in accordance with the traditions of the House, I am delighted to pay my respects to my predecessor, Ken Eastham. Ken Eastham was elected to the House in 1979, but I had known him for some time before that. I must be one of the few new Members who have known their predecessor for most of their life. Ken could sometimes appear a little dour, but he did his work extraordinarily well, and behind that facade there were often extreme acts of kindness above and beyond the usual advice bureau work that one would expect from an MP, and which in Ken's case one got--both his constituents and new members of the Labour party.
For example, when I joined the Labour party in the early 1970s, a long time before new Labour, I lived in the area that Ken represented as a local councillor. That was at a time in the inner city when the ease of access to the Labour party was often in inverse proportion to the number of members that the Labour party had in that branch. In addition, young, opinionated, new graduates were also not often welcomed into inner-city Labour parties. Those parties were often said to be closed. But Ken Eastham went out of his way to help me along in the Labour party, and to support me in a way that at that time was quite unusual.
It was also at that time as a councillor that Ken took up the fight against corruption and what has more recently been called sleaze. He ran a long campaign against some dodgy contracts in which the local authority was involved, and had them changed. As a Member of this House, he was always the hammer of corruption. He spoke out against sleaze on a number of occasions, and that fitted well with his personality--that of an upright man reeking of integrity.
I shall just mention one other part of his work which I hope to follow. Although the British Aerospace factory at Chadderton is not within the Manchester, Blackley constituency, many of my constituents work there. Ken was tireless in trying to get contracts for British Aerospace in order to ensure that the people he represented stayed in work. Ken will be sadly missed as the Member for Blackley, and I hope to follow in his footsteps.
I was delighted on my election to receive a letter from the previous Member for Blackley, Paul Rose. I had not seen him since he decided to retire at an early age in 1979. He was elected to the Chamber in 1964, when he was the youngest Member of the House. He could still be the Member for Blackley, because he worked hard, he fought
against racism and he was a good constituency MP. His letter of congratulations told me--something which I did not know--that he is now a coroner in the south of England. I hope also to follow in the tradition of Paul Rose.
It is also traditional in a maiden speech to talk about one's constituency--in my case, Manchester, Blackley, which the BBC often annoyingly pronounces incorrectly when giving election results. I have listened to a number of maiden speeches today and on previous occasions, when hon. Members have laid claim to win the competition to represent the most beautiful constituency in the country.
Unfortunately, I would not enter Blackley in that competition. Its people are wonderful, and the constituency has many attributes, but I do not think that anyone would believe me if I said that it has the best scenery in the United Kingdom--it does not. However, it has, if not the largest, one of the largest municipal parks in Europe, which is often visited and which will in the near future benefit from lottery money--Heaton park. It also has one of the three oldest municipal parks--Queen's park--which, again, we hope will receive money from the lottery fund. Along with Phillips park and a park in Salford, it was one of the first municipal parks.
The constituency also benefited from the first modern tram system to be introduced in Britain, which runs between the city centre and Bury in the north and Altrincham in the south. I hope during my period as Member of Parliament to extend that system to other parts of the constituency, which will benefit enormously.
I said that the constituency is not beautiful. It is a traditional industrial area, with many houses, which suffered enormously during the recessions of the early 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, each one biting into its economic and employment base further than the other. We lost the Ferranti factory when Ferranti went bankrupt, British Aerospace has contracted and ICI, turning into Zeneca, has also contracted. One of the most important tasks, and one reason for supporting the Government's programme, is to bring jobs back to Blackley and to ensure that the existing industry expands and employs more people.
As unemployment in the constituency has risen, so many of the social conditions have become worse. There is considerable poverty in parts of the constituency. Much of the housing in the private and public sector needs much investment. There is a great deal to do within the constituency, and I look forward to many of the Government's Bills which will improve that situation.
One of the ways in which the constituents of Blackley will find employment is as a result of the Commonwealth games in 2002. The job creation potential of major international sporting events, particularly multi-sporting events, is not generally known. It is estimated that the Commonwealth games will produce about the same number of jobs as half a car-manufacturing plant. I should like many of those jobs to go to people within Blackley and its immediate area, where most of the games will take place--Manchester, Central.
Therefore, I am concerned with some of the comments that have been made in the debate, suggesting that in some way the Commonwealth Games will not take place in Manchester in 2002. They will take place, and I will explain why.
There is a contract between the bidding city, Manchester city council, and the Commonwealth Games Federation, the international body which is the equivalent of the International Olympic Committee. Within that, there are only two reasons for taking away the Commonwealth Games. First, a natural disaster, an earthquake, a riot or a major event would prevent the games from taking place. Secondly, the games would be stopped if they were not properly organised. One cannot predict natural disasters, but they are unlikely in Manchester. We will organise an excellent games, not only for Manchester but for the whole of the United Kingdom. It will be the largest multi-sport event to take place in this country since the 1948 Olympic games.
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for his comments about the shooting event in the games. He said that he would use his powers to allow it to take place. He paid me a tribute, for which I am thankful. I thought that the tradition was for hon. Members to receive praise after they had made their maiden speech and not before, but I am grateful for his remarks.
A Conservative Member gave 80 per cent. of the story of why shooting is part of the games. It is correct that Manchester's original bid did not include shooting. We won the English nomination against London, and Sheffield withdrew. We had no competitors in Bermuda. The biggest hurdle we had to get over was obtaining the English nomination. We had not included shooting, although, by certain criteria, it is the third most popular sport in the Commonwealth games. When we decided which sports to include, we listed costs against income, the number of spectators that watch the sports, the history of the sport and other obvious criteria. After we had done that, shooting dropped out.
When we got to Bermuda, the shooting lobbies from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the Falklands drew up a petition and asked us to include the event. It is inconceivable that, at that stage, having got the English nomination and having passed all the necessary tests, we would not have been awarded the games even if we had not included shooting. We were to get the nomination, and we wanted everyone to be happy.
The Sports Council was on our delegation, and it said that it would do everything that it could to provide the funds for a shooting range. So we included shooting, and the Commonwealth Games Federation was delighted. It was not a condition, and even if we took the most extreme position and shooting were to be excluded--which it will not be because of the commitment given by the Home Secretary--it would not prevent the Commonwealth games from coming to England in 2002.
There is no doubt that the event will be affected. It is not well known that seven home countries compete in the Commonwealth games, including Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, which is not included in the Bill. Representatives from those countries will still be able to train and compete, but the event will be affected because English, Welsh and Scottish pistol shooters will not be able to train if the Bill is passed.
In Bermuda, I gave a commitment to the Commonwealth Games Federation that shooting would be included. It will be included, given the Home Secretary's assurance, but it will be a different competition from the one intended.
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