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House of Commons

Monday 18 October 2004

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

HOME DEPARTMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Burial Law

1. Andrew Bennett (Denton and Reddish) (Lab): What progress is being made with the review of burial law. [191190]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Paul Goggins): We are completing an extensive consultation on the review of burial law, to which we have received more than 400 responses. We are considering them very carefully, and I hope to be able to announce detailed proposals early next year.

Andrew Bennett: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, but does he accept that it is more than four years since the Select Committee reported to the House on the very worrying state of cemeteries in many parts of the country, the lack of burial spaces for future interments and all the other problems that go with that? Will he bring a little more urgency to getting those problems sorted out?

Paul Goggins: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's work on the Environment, Transport, and Regional Affairs Committee; the report of the Sub-Committee that he chaired was an important piece of work. I was reading that report recently and noticed that, in the first section, it quoted a remark made by one of my predecessors, who stated that the issue was only exceeded in its importance by its difficulty. That predecessor was speaking in 1846 and he promptly rushed to legislation. It is important that we get the matter right. My hon. Friend is correct: we need to look at sensitive issues, such as the reuse of burial grounds. We are doing that carefully and I promise him that we shall introduce proposals, based on the consultations, as soon as possible.

Helen Southworth (Warrington, South) (Lab): My hon. Friend knows that the gaps in the current legislation can result in difficult and distressing cases that are hard to deal with, so will he pay particular attention during the review to requiring all burial authorities to give specific consideration to the needs of
 
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bereaved relatives? Families can be extremely distressed in those circumstances and it is important that all burial authorities give proper consideration and respect to their needs at such times.

Paul Goggins: I agree strongly with my hon. Friend. It is true that sometimes I have to make some very difficult decisions on those matters. It is important that burial authorities have due regard to the needs of bereaved families at such a difficult and sensitive time. I want to see a commitment not only on that issue but on death certification, too, where it is vital that our public officials, who bear responsibility for those services, have due regard to the feelings of families.

Gun Crime

2. Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): How many drive-by shootings have been recorded in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement. [191191]

4. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): What action he is taking in response to the latest incidents of gun crime in Nottingham. [191193]

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): This is the first opportunity that I and the House have had to send our condolences and our heartfelt sympathies to the family and friends of Danielle Beccan. All gun crime is a tragedy, but the death of a child is a bigger tragedy than any other.

We do not collect statistics on drive-by shootings, but the statistics we do collect demonstrate a fall in the number of deaths from gun crime over the last three years, while there was a rapidly rising curve until 2001 in relation to the use of guns. That has been stabilised but it is still not acceptable. Although 77 per cent. of all gun crime ends up with no one being hurt and only 18 per cent. have some minor hurt, it is a tragedy for individuals, families and communities that even a small number of people are killed by guns. It is, therefore, beholden on all of us to ensure that we join together to find the solutions.

Mr. Prentice: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply; we all think of the victims of those senseless, drive-by shootings. Did he see the piece in The Observer yesterday, quoting the Manchester police, who say that the average life expectancy of those involved in gun crime in Manchester is 24? Who are the people supplying those guns? Surely we need to come down like a ton of bricks on those who supply illegal firearms. A sentence of five years is far too lenient.

Mr. Blunkett: We can certainly debate whether five years as a minimum is unsatisfactory, but when the House debated the matter the average sentence for carrying a gun was 18 months. I think we all agreed that that was outrageous and that something should be done about it. I have to point out that, for the first time ever, we have raised the minimum sentence for death from use of a gun to a minimum starting point of 30 years. Every time we make proposals to the House on minimum sentences, there is conflict within, as well as between, parties about whether it is right for us to do so. The measures that we took last year, including those that we
 
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added to the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, are a starting point, not an end point, for getting a grip on gun crime. Gun crime deaths amount to 8 per cent. of all murders in this country, and with the use of other weapons, including knives, we face another major challenge in protecting our communities.

Alan Simpson: I thank the Home Secretary for his kind words about Danielle Beccan, and I pay tribute to the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell), in whose constituency the family live. Will the Home Secretary, however, accept that the best way in which we can overcome the problem of guns on our streets is to stop the guns getting there in the first place and to look carefully at how those guns get through the current system? Will he also support the initiatives that are being taken by the local authority and local communities in Nottingham? One of our most urgent challenges is to give those in the communities the confidence to come forward with evidence about the holding of guns, without putting their own lives at risk. In that context, will he send support to the local communities and local authority in Nottingham for their initiative next Friday, when, with Danielle Beccan's family, people will stand together in Nottingham in an act of solidarity and defiance against the gun crime that we face?

Mr. Blunkett: I shall be very happy indeed to send a message of support. The whole ministerial team will visit Nottingham and the east midlands on 4 and 5 November, and we have already agreed to meet representatives of the communities most affected. Indeed, in July, we gave £145,000 to the community of St. Ann's and Radford. I want to reinforce my tribute to the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell), who is unable to raise these issues this afternoon because of his position on the Front Bench. We have also given £10,000 to Mothers Against Guns, which is playing a signal role in changing the culture and attitudes of local people. It is only through a combination of working within and from the community that the action plan that was agreed with the Association of Chief Police Officers a year ago can be made effective in Nottingham and throughout the country.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): Surely the current position is entirely unacceptable. The stark fact is that gun crime has doubled in the past five years. In trying to tackle the supply of guns and to return to the position that originally obtained, will the Home Secretary consider imitation firearms, which, as the all-party group on gun crime found, have been converted on far too many occasions to fire live ammunition?

Mr. Blunkett: Yes, we will. Although we were sceptical about the ability to differentiate between the different types of model gun, given that we had to avoid criminalising toy guns, it is an offence to carry a model gun in public, and the police have the power to intervene if they think that someone is carrying a gun. There is a lot more to do, and although everyone agrees that it would be a good idea to do it, they have not yet produced an acceptable definition of such a firearm, even though we have now taken the steps to which the
 
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House agreed last year—unanimously, if my memory serves me correct. It is clear from that that we did not disagree about banning the import and sale of such weapons, about the arrest of people carrying them and, of course, about dealing with Brocock guns. There is more to be done, but we have made progress in the past two years. We certainly needed to do so because, as we acknowledged, the carrying and, regrettably, the use of guns had grown exponentially from the mid-1990s onwards.

David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): I join the Home Secretary in offering condolences to the family and friends of Danielle Beccan and, indeed, the families and friends of the other people who have died in Nottingham in the past year.

Although I understand the Home Secretary's response to the original question on the measurement of drive-by shootings, given the changing nature of shootings in Britain recently, it might be worth while to consider reclassifying or attempting to reclassify some of the measurements of such shootings. I understand only too well the problems that he faces with the definition of replica firearms—that needs to be dealt with—but may I take it from the tone of his comments that he does not agree with the director of the police standards unit, Paul Evans, who said that we have

"a very, very small gun problem"?

Mr. Blunkett: On the right hon. Gentleman's first observation, we obviously have a degree of common cause in trying to find a definition of replica and model guns that would work and that would be usable by the police.

On the right hon. Gentleman's second question, the head of the police standards unit—who, having been the chief of police in Boston, has more experience of gun crime than I or anyone in this Chamber—was reflecting on the relative incidence of gun crime, the relative incidence of death from gun crime and the relative incidence of serious injury from gun crime. There is no difference between us in accepting that the carrying, use and availability of guns is totally unacceptable. The issue between us is only how we tackle that and whether we are able, working with the communities most affected, to ensure that we do not exaggerate the situation to the point where it looks as though there is nothing that can be done and that it is out of control. That would play into the hands of those who want to foster among young men, in particular, a view that they are invincible, that authority can do nothing and that the carrying and use of guns is somehow trendy and a fashion accessory that makes others proud of them. None of us wants that. That is why the head of the police standards unit merely made the observation that we should not exaggerate.

David Davis: I thank the Home Secretary for that; no doubt, we will return to the issue in detail later today.

I would not normally ask the Home Secretary an operational question, but there was a write-up in the weekend press that, three months ago, the National Crime Squad had ceased an intelligence operation in Nottingham that was aimed at the very gangs that have been causing some of these problems. As I said, I would
 
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not normally ask an operational question, but will he at least consider that decision? If it was necessary to withdraw an intelligence operation against the advice of the people involved in it, either there are not enough resources in the National Crime Squad or there was a strategic misjudgment in withdrawing it from one of the more dangerous cities in Britain.

Mr. Blunkett: I appreciate the way in which the right hon. Gentleman puts the question. We are always being harangued for not getting involved in operational decisions from the Dispatch Box. I take the point entirely and I would be very happy for him to talk to Bill Hughes, the head of the National Crime Squad, about its work and how it has been working with Operation Stealth, which has successfully begun the process of turning the situation round in Nottingham, as has the Sherwood initiative, which deals with the corollary of drug crime. I will happily arrange for such discussions; I appreciate the nature of the question.

Mr. John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab): As yet, few, if any, cases of possession of firearms have found their way through the criminal justice system to have the new mandatory minimum sentence applied. That sentence was aimed particularly not so much at the hardened criminals who are determined to use guns but at the young men whom my right hon. Friend mentioned a few moments ago and who might casually carry guns and become involved in gun crime. In the period before that sentence is seen to bite, will he see whether more can be done to get across the fact that the sentence is now in the system and that the price to be paid for casually carrying guns is now very high?

Mr. Blunkett: My right hon. Friend is correct. As we know, even with a speeded-up criminal justice system, the ability to take someone through the courts on this charge has not yet been possible. We have just initiated a poster campaign, but we probably need to think even more imaginatively about how we get the message across. Without making a party political point, I note that, when I was in Brixton at the beginning of August, I found that young men and women were very keen to work with us in developing their music as part of the message. If the music can become the message, the culture itself might change.

Mr. Mark Oaten (Winchester) (LD): May I also express the sympathy of the Liberal Democrats to the family of Danielle?

The Home Secretary is obviously aware that one of the problems with firearms is the number of them that come into the country illegally. With that in mind, will he look again at the structures that we have to police our ports and airports? Police officers, Customs officers and immigration officers are currently involved and there is quite a bit of overlapping work. Will he look again at the suggestion that has been made by a number of people to set up a dedicated national border force? Having that in place may actually make our borders more secure and, in doing so, may help to stop some of the traffic of guns into this country.
 
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Mr. Blunkett: The new Serious Organised Crime Agency will join together the police, Customs and the immigration service in a combined operation that will use the intelligence of the National Criminal Intelligence Service and be joined with the National Crime Squad. We will have a unified approach to tackle the organised smuggling of guns and thus the ability to address the problem. Part of the challenge that we face is those who are adapting existing weapons in this country, part is the use of the internet—we need to clamp down on the availability of such weapons through the internet—and part is the smuggling of weapons, sometimes from former Communist central and eastern European countries. When taken together, the measures that we have already enunciated can work. A border control force relates to a different issue, but if it were to be needed, it could be established as a subset of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

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