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4.15 pm
As for rehabilitation, I accept that shooting may form an important part of the process, but I do not accept that that means that only handguns are suitable for the purpose. Other firearms may still be legally held and used by the disabled and others for therapeutic reasons.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
I have here a letter from the Home Secretary to the British Paraplegic Shooting Association, in which the right hon. Gentleman also says that rifles may be used by disabled people. However, is the Minister aware that a person in a wheelchair would find it very difficult to use a target rifle, because, almost of necessity, one needs to lie on one's stomach to use such a weapon? It is possible to use a rest, but it is not so effective. For someone in a wheelchair, a pistol is easy to use, because one needs only one's hands.
Mr. Michael:
The letter from which the hon. Gentleman quotes goes on to say:
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield)
rose--
Mr. Michael:
I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope that he will do me the courtesy of listening carefully to what I am saying in order to explain policy, rather than intervening in a manner that suggests that he is not listening to the strong case that I am making.
Mr. Grieve:
I hope that I always listen to the Minister with courtesy. He raises the great fear of theft of .22 pistols. Is he aware--I think he is--that, if people wish to use .22 pistols for an illegal or nefarious purpose, they can purchase them across the counter in France and readily import them into this country, a process that is likely to be much easier for those wishing to perpetrate offences than breaking into a heavily guarded shooting club, which meets the exigencies of the Secretary of State?
Mr. Michael:
I not sure that the hon. Gentleman is listening or has listened with care--his courtesy is not in question--to the arguments made in previous debates as well as in this one. There is a serious public danger in the private possession of handguns. That is precisely why the previous Government introduced legislation to ban larger-calibre handguns, and why this Government fulfilled an election pledge to give the House an opportunity to vote on the banning of .22 handguns. That danger is very real, as shown by the use of .22 handguns to kill people.
The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) raises the matter of illegally held handguns. It is certainly the Government's intention to do all they can to combat the
availability and possession of handguns, illegal and legal. However, it is a fact that legally held handguns were used at, for instance, Dunblane, which is why, before and after Lord Cullen's report, all the consideration was of how to deal with legally held handguns.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed):
Surely the thrust of the Cullen report was that, in order to deal with the problem, weapons should not be held at home. We are now considering whether disabled people should have access to weapons held at secure centres because of the reasons that justify an exception being made for them.
Mr. Michael:
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, that point was widely considered in the debates on the legislation introduced by the previous Government and in the earlier discussions on this Bill. We strongly took the view--as did the previous Government--that such exemptions did not undermine the general principle that a ban on handguns was necessary.
The right hon. Gentleman is right about the contents of the Cullen report, but we reached the same conclusion as the previous Government--which was widely supported on both sides--that, in the interests of public safety, we should go further than Lord Cullen's recommendations. That remains our view. The amendment would unacceptably undermine the underlying principles of the Bill.
If the weapons are stored at a designated site, it becomes a potential target for criminals. We dealt with that issue in our debates on licensed pistol clubs when we considered the previous Bill. We must accept that there is a substantial risk of theft when a potential source of guns is created.
We are sorry that it has not been possible to find a way to allow cartridge target pistol shooting to continue. We considered the issue carefully before introducing the Bill, and we have reconsidered it over the summer. Our conclusion remains that a complete ban is the only safe option. I therefore ask the House to reject the amendment.
Mr. Beith:
The Minister has advanced a case that many of us find worrying. We should be united on the deserving character of the disabled people to whom the amendment refers. If any exception is justified, surely we should consider this one. The Home Secretary's letter to the British Olympic Association, which was echoed by the Minister this afternoon, said:
The Minister referred to the dangers of theft. The other exceptions that he has found necessary--mainly, but not entirely, occupational exceptions--involve handguns being held at home or in a workplace. If there is a risk of theft, it will lie more in those exceptions than in allowing guns to be held in special centres in limited numbers for the limited purpose and limited group of people specified in the amendment.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is a greater chance of
Mr. Beith:
Indeed, attempting to break in to Bisley would be an inefficient way for a criminal to attempt to obtain a handgun. The amendment would allow the Secretary of State to set all the safety conditions to his satisfaction.
I do not want to enter into the wider arguments about the Bill. We are considering a specific exemption for a specific group. It is unreasonable of the Minister to argue that the danger of theft is so great. Using theft statistics based on the holding of handguns at home to argue against a system under which they would no longer be held at home is not reasonable. Although he separated his figures in the end, he included in his statistics thefts of guns already being held illegally. Thefts from private homes, however, which the Minister had in mind, cannot take place when guns can be held only in specified centres which meet conditions set by him.
Mr. Michael:
Will the right hon. Gentleman explain his comments about not all stolen guns being legally held?
Mr. Beith:
The Minister quoted figures for thefts of handguns, which I assumed included thefts of guns that were not legally held in the first place. If I heard him correctly, he seemed to separate out incidents of guns being stolen which had been legally held in the first place. Once the legislation is passed, it will not be possible to steal a legally held gun from someone's home, because guns will not be kept there--unless, of course, that person is covered by one of the other exemptions which the Minister has defended.
Mr. Michael:
The right hon. Gentleman obviously misheard me. Can he explain his curious assumption that the figures I gave included handguns that were held illegally? Is he suggesting that people who held handguns illegally would wander into a police station and report their theft?
Mr. Beith:
The police would come to know of guns that had been acquired illegally not because somebody reported them, but because, when they eventually caught up with someone who was holding guns illegally, they would trace where they had come from in the first place. I thought that that was why the Minister made a distinction in the figures.
The Minister is trying to dodge the main point, which is that it is not reasonable to use figures from a time when handguns could be held at home, and assume that they will apply when handguns cannot be held at home.
The amendment would not introduce a widespread exemption. The exemption relates to a small and particularly deserving group of people for whom it is not possible to transfer to other forms of shooting from which they can gain the same satisfaction and the same levels of skill.
"We have considered the points made in support of the two Lords amendments . . . very carefully indeed but remain of the view that it would be inconsistent to allow individual groups of shooters an exemption from the ban. To do so would undermine the principle embodied in the Bill that there should be a complete ban on handguns."
Before the hon. Gentleman intervened, I was about to develop the issue of security. If the firearms are to be stored at a designated site, they become a potential target for criminals. I will not go over the arguments we had about licensed pistol clubs in debates on the previous Bill, but there is a substantial risk of theft whenever a potential source of guns is created.
"It is very difficult to justify isolating one group of individuals, such as . . . disabled shooters".
I disagree. I do not think that it is difficult to justify isolating that group, because there are particular reasons why they cannot transfer as readily to another sport as able-bodied people can. If an exception can be made safely, there is a case for making it.
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