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Mr. Barnes: The answers given by the previous Government on dismantling were terribly thin. Not only were they incorrect, as my hon. Friend has shown, but they did not respond to the argument being put. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench will respond to the points made by my hon. Friend. He knows that I support them. They are due serious answers before we vote.
Mr. Mitchell: The arguments were very thin. Thin is my description of arguments with which I disagree. Factually they were thin, too. The underlying concern was not to have dismantling, because the then Government wanted legislation. They wanted to show that they were doing something. They wanted to hang on to seats in Scotland. There was a threat in Scotland and they wanted to conciliate opinion there and show that they were responding to concerns. That is why they refused to listen to the argument. They had to have something to show to the Scottish electorate. That did not do them any good.
Now that that pressure is gone, we have an opportunity to rethink and take a cooler look. A cooler look would suggest looking again at what Lord Cullen proposed and asking ourselves whether that is the more effective way of dealing with the situation. Can we afford the scale of compensation? Should the Bill destroy the sport? Will the total ban work any better? I do not think that that is likely. We should answer such questions. It is very difficult to defeat totally the ingenuity of lunatics, as Hamilton was. We need a rational approach to the problem, to stop whole weapons being available among the public. Gun clubs and licensed, controlled premises should be the only places where guns can be reassembled.
I am in something of a quandary about to how to vote, because I am in the unusual position of receiving a three-line Whip on a free vote. I shall sit here and hope that some kind of telepathy from the Whips Office tells me what to do. I have not yet got one of those little bleepers. When they go off in the middle of debates, some of my hon. Friends look happy--even ecstatic.
If I were approaching such legislation, I would not start from this point.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), for whom I have had a healthy regard, even since I have been reading his wife's columns in The Times on Saturdays, where she gives away all his personal secrets. He said that he knew very little about gun clubs, but he made an excellent speech on sensible, intelligent, well-thought-out and logical grounds. He also made a very good philosophical case against the Bill. That is not a party viewpoint; I think that he made a very good speech.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight), who has just left the Chamber, on a first-class maiden speech. It is very difficult to make maiden speeches and I know that hon. Members often have butterflies in their stomachs. He paid due tribute to his predecessors and his constituency.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Stringer) made an excellent speech. I wish that I could make such a cogent speech without notes. I knew his predecessor well, because we served on the Select Committee on Employment together. He was a good man, who represented his constituents well. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will continue in the same vein. If I could just counsel him, although they may be grimy, he should see the streets of Manchester, Blackley as the most beautiful part of the United Kingdom. He should not be afraid to say that, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If the good burghers of Blackley have returned him to the House, he should not be afraid to stand up to say that it is the most beautiful part of the United Kingdom.
I regret to say that I find the Bill small-minded, mean and populist. I do not believe it will be good legislation, which is why I oppose it. My colleague on the Front Bench, my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), will remember that I was unhappy about the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, which I considered to be similarly ill advised, but the Bill goes further and is far worse than that.
I have probably done more pistol shooting than most hon. Members, perhaps with the exception of the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook). I was paid to do it; it was not a sport, but something which I had to do in my working hours. Although I quite enjoyed it in those working hours, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to spend Saturday afternoons firing a pistol. Thousands of people, however, wish to spend their leisure hours firing pistols on ranges. They do no harm to anyone and they do not damage the country. They are perfectly law abiding and I would far rather that they did that than ran riot around our football grounds.
One must ask why the Bill proposes a ban on pistol shooting. First, it is a populist reaction to the ghastly tragedy of Dunblane. We all say that it was a tragedy, but we all truly believe that what happened at Dunblane was quite awful. It does not, however, justify the Bill.
The Home Secretary said that the Bill was designed to protect the public, but I do not follow the logic of that. A more august person than I referred to cricket bats, which was a reasonable reference to make, and the banning of motor cars has also been discussed. I wish that hon. Members would think about the "ingenuity of lunatics", to which the hon. Member for Great Grimsby has already referred. There was a ghastly case recently of a man who
went to the home of his estranged wife and poured petrol through the letterbox, killing his sister-in-law and her three children. A couple of gallons of petrol can do just as much harm as a pistol, and Thomas Hamilton would have found that out quickly enough. It is pathetic to ban pistols when there are so many ways in which to harm others.
Of course I accept that the licensing procedures should be sorted out, because they operate badly. I agree with the hon. Member for Stockton, North that it was ill advised to issue a gun licence to Hamilton. That does not mean that we should stop thousands of law-abiding citizens from enjoying a sport. Cullen made some sensible recommendations and I urge those on the Government Front Bench to re-examine them carefully.
The second reason for the ban on pistols is the urge of some Members on the Government Benches to place restrictions on people. They are acting in a prescriptive and regulatory manner. It is the sign of a nanny Government. They are interested not in people's freedom, but in restricting what they may do.
I do not want to shoot, but it is sad that Labour Members, and possibly some of my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches say, " I don't want to shoot, so you can't either." That is an authoritarian and unnecessary response. One might say the same thing about boxing. I do not wish to box, and many people are injured boxing, but many people came off the streets of the east end because of boxing clubs. They benefited from that by learning to fight in the clubs rather than beating each other up on the streets. Some people might still say, however, that one should ban boxing because it is so awful.
Some might argue that one should ban rugby football, union or league, because players break their necks. I know that many Labour Members, including some who agree with my argument, would ban hunting. I may not wish to hunt, but perfectly law-abiding people do so. They do not harm society and we should not ban their activity.
It has been said that tonight's Division will be a free vote. It may be a free vote, and I am sure that some Labour Members will vote--on a three-line whip--according to their consciences, but the political correctness that we have heard depressingly often in the speeches of Labour Members will reign, and there is no question but that the Bill will be passed. In the new Labour party, political correctness is reigning.
The 2002 Commonwealth games have already been mentioned, and I hope that they will be held in Manchester. However, those who are optimistic about Britain being considered for future Olympic games should think hard about the Bill. We would not be happy travelling to Olympic games in which we could not participate--sports such as the 100 m race or equestrian events. We would not support a bid to host games by a country that did not allow us to participate in a sport.
Mrs. McGuire:
Can the hon. Gentleman name any other Olympic sport that must be regulated by police?
Mr. Robathan:
That is a very interesting question, of which I should have liked to have notice. I suspect, however, that the hon. Lady will find that various so-called self-defence clubs, such as judo clubs, require
The Government propose, most extraordinarily of all, that citizens of other countries should be able to walk our streets and fire their weapons, whereas British citizens will not be allowed to do so. That is a most extraordinary suggestion. Hon. Members have already mentioned disabled shooters. I will not revisit that issue, because other hon. Members wish to speak.
The hon. Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), who made an excellent maiden speech, asked whether the legislation will work, and said that that would be the test. The obvious answer is that it will not work, because it will not reduce the accessibility of handguns. The Bill will have a negligible impact on handgun accessibility. The hon. Member for Stockton, North said that there are perhaps 4 million firearms in the United Kingdom, and the police estimate that there are between 1 million and 4 million illegal firearms. How much more worrying are those weapons than those owned by law-abiding people who wish to practise their sport on a Saturday afternoon?
9.2 pm
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