Examination of Witnesses (Questions 158-174)
JAMIE REED, REV RICHARD LEE AND PROFESSOR JOHN ASHTON
2 NOVEMBER 2010
Q158 Chair: Rev
Lee, Mr Reed, Professor Ashton, thank you very much for coming
today to give evidence to us. Obviously, we all remember the shocking
details of 2 June, none more so than the three of you who are
very much part of the community there. Mr Reed, of course, we
saw you relate to the country the concerns of your constituents;
something I think none of us sitting around this Committee room
would like to have been in a position to do, and we have heard
from some of your constituents here today.
Are you confident, Mr Reed, that the inquiries
that are currently ongoing will get to the bottom of what has
happened? Because today—I don't know whether you have seen
a copy of the report produced by ACPO, but they have sent all
Members of this Committee a very detailed report and they're giving
evidence next week with the Chief Constable of Cumbria. But are
you satisfied that what is on offer at the moment will give yourself,
and your constituents, full satisfaction around the events of
2 June?
Mr Reed: First
of all, Mr Vaz, thank you very much to the whole Committee for
establishing this hearing and all of the hearings associated with
it. I think it has given this issue a momentum and an analysis,
which it otherwise wouldn't have had from any other source within
Parliament as of yet, so I'm very grateful for that. I've seen
the ACPO Report. I've read it. It needs closer inspection
from me. I think we have to—as a society and certainly as
a Parliament, as a legislature—compare that ACPO Report,
which I think is a very good report, with the existing firearms
legislation. That's a job for Parliament to do, and until we do
that I personally won't have the satisfaction I would like. I
can't speak for my constituents because I think, as you've seen,
there is a range of views. So, as good as the ACPO Report
is—and I think it is good—it's a very detailed starting
point for the time being, from my point of view.
Q159 Chair:
Rev Lee, you may not have seen the ACPO Report, but one
of the facts that surprised me is that 10% of those who have firearms
have criminal convictions of some kind, and that Derek Bird had
his firearm from the age of 16 or 17, despite being known to the
police. You know the local community. Would that have come as
a surprise to people in the local community in Cumbria?
Rev Lee: I think
some of the folk, who live within the urban concentrations, wouldn't
be so much aware that the folk who lived on the edge of the farming
industry would be so involved with firearms, but they probably
wouldn't realise how involved youngsters would be from a very
early age with other dangerous pieces of farming equipment: the
thresher, the plough, the tractor. If you look at the number of
industrial injuries we have on farmland with farming procedures,
it falls into that sort of context. So I don't think they'd be
particularly shocked and many of them know; you can't live on
the edge of the farming communities without hearing shotgun fire.
However, that shotgun fire now—for certain
individuals—is deeply distressing because the sound of that
weapon going off doesn't remind them of a country pursuit, it
reminds them of a lethal and a most aggressive attack upon themselves
and their communities. So, I don't think they'd be particularly
amazed. There may be people who just don't know. But certainly,
having spent many years in the Royal Air Force watching how carefully
we train young men and young women to use weapons all the way
through their lives, I'd be rather uneasy myself to leave someone
at the age of 16 with an experience of breaking open a shotgun
and firing it and saying that's the level of training they can
abide with for the rest of their lives. I think there's a question
mark there.
Q160 Lorraine Fullbrook:
Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to address my question to both Rev
Lee and to Mr Reed individually. Following on, Rev Lee, from what
you have just said: can you describe to the Committee the impact
the shootings have had on the local community?
Rev Lee: Well,
it would be outrageous of me, in a sense, to try and sum that
up in a few moments. All I can say is that there is an abiding
sense of—it's not quite fear, but it's an abiding sense
of someone took away my innocence; someone took away my village;
someone took away my street; someone took away my liberty, and
they killed someone outside my front door," and one feels
offended by that and very unsettled indeed. Even the passage of
time doesn't help because for various reasons people do revisit
their grief, revisit their pain, and there are certain folk, without
going into any detail, who will not go past a point easily. They
will not pass that site on the bridge, that site on Grove Road,
where someone lay or was murdered. So the effect on the community,
I look upon it as if you take an enormous stone block and you
hit it with a chisel at a certain angle; fault lines will fracture
throughout, and you never quite know where they are until you
just try to move the block.
That's what is happening to people. There is a transition
time in which they think they're coming to terms with it, then
something is said or something happens; such as All Saints Tide,
All Souls Tide. As you know, many churches have services where
they recall the names of those who have died over the last year;
that can be a pivotal point. Christmas, another point when they
realise that there is a space at the table that was never there
before. So I think the effects are multi-lateral and dictated
by how people were at the time when things happened. Because some
families found it more deep-seated, hurtful, then and now they're
just coming to terms with it and realising the man was a person
who not only died but was murdered, and that brings out a certain
element of anger, frustration. One of the words that people have
said to me, they've just felt a bit at times—although I
would like also to pay tribute to the work of the Family Liaison
Officers, who have been superb, and many other agencies have stepped
into breaches. But there was a certain sense on the day of abandonment;
abandonment to violence, all the authorities that should stop
this happening didn't. It continued. Whether we like it or not,
it flowed. All of the support systems—
Q161 Chair:
Can I stop you there: who should have stopped this?
Rev Lee: We don't
know. That's an inarticulate response about folk just saying,
"The death of one person, two people, three people, four
people, five people", and it goes on.
Q162 Lorraine Fullbrook: I
would like to ask the same question to Mr Reed, if you could describe
what you feel about the impact of the shootings on the local community?
Mr Reed: It's been
profound. I have to say I'm very grateful that our community had
Rev Lee within it because the stoicism and the compassion, and
the remarkable way within which he has led so much of the community
on these issues has been truly remarkable, and we're all grateful
for that. The community is a community like many—
Chair: Sorry, Mr Reed, I know you should
be used to these settings but some of our Members can't hear you.
Could you speak up a little louder? Thank you.
Mr Reed: Sorry.
Apologies. The community is a rural community with a long mining
heritage, so it's used to large scale tragedies. Things like this
are unique and they do have a large community-wide psychological
effect—there's absolutely no doubt about that at all—particularly
upon children, I think. The effect upon the families affected
is obvious but different for every family. I think what compounded
the effect, what almost accelerated and deepened the effect of
the events was the frankly gratuitous, shocking, unjustifiable,
invasive media coverage that surrounded much of it, which has
left very, very deep scars.
I'm not in a position to say more than any other
member of the community how it has affected the community, other
than my experience is it has been deep and it has been profound
and it will take a while to recover from, but we will recover.
Q163 Lorraine Fullbrook: Can
I just pick up the point about the media. Can you explain specifically
what you mean about that? Was it an intrusion or did you feel
it was badly reported or wrongly reported?
Mr Reed: All of
those. I think one of the issues this debate throws up—and
it's a legitimate debate for all of us—is what kind of country
are we and what kind of country do we want to be? Do we want to
be the kind of country where the son of a murder victim, on his
first day back at school, is being hounded by the press? What
kind of country is that? What kind of legislature allows that?
What kind of people are we that we allow those things to go by
and not raise a hand or an eyebrow about whether or not that's
right or wrong? And it's fundamentally wrong. What happened in
the midst of this tragedy was that news reporting and news reportage,
very, very quickly, within a matter of hours, became entertainment.
That can't be right and that must be addressed.
Q164 Lorraine Fullbrook: So
did you feel that there was nothing positive that the media could
do for you in this instance?
Mr Reed: In these
instances the media has a crucial role, in the first instance,
in disseminating information—a hugely important public protection
role in many ways. When the incident is over—this incident
was done in little over an hour—the role of the media changes
and, of course, it's right and proper that it should be reported
upon. Is it right and proper that people should be offered money
to sell stories when, as we know, once we develop a marketplace
for this kind of commodity stories are invented with no regard
for the people affected by what's printed or broadcast?
I've spent time in the House speaking about these
issues. I could speak much longer about them.
Q165 Mr Burley: Clearly
one of the results of this terrible incident is some kind of call
for tighter government controls, and we're obviously all trying
to tease out what that might mean in practical terms. We saw a
split on the representatives of the community this morning between
three that favoured some kind of tighter control, in terms of
bullets or the way guns were kept; one who owned a licence who
didn't. I was just wondering is that reflective of the wider community?
Is there a difference of opinion locally as to what tighter gun
controls might mean?
Professor Ashton:
Can I make an offering at this stage? I should just say, to situate
my position, I'm the Director of Public Health in Cumbria, and
my areas of interest and expertise involve the fact that, as a
Director of Public Health, I was responsible for the health service
side of things, albeit I was at a WHO meeting on injury and violence
prevention, which is a longstanding interest of mine. I wanted
to refer to that because I'm familiar with quite a lot of the
evidence base for prevention, and I've been chairing the group
that took over from the Chief Constable's Gold Command, the recovery
group, since I'm dealing with the psychological side at a community
level and I have a psychiatric training as well as a public health
training. So that's my context there.
But I would like to draw your attention to two or
three things in terms of the evidence base. One is that a proportion
of violence is preventable, and people tend to be nihilistic about
this, but a proportion of it is preventable. And the evidence
base, I'll leave with you the WHO documentation on this—
Q166 Chair:
It would be very helpful to the Committee if you would apply all
that to the circumstances of Cumbria and tell us what was preventable.
Professor Ashton:
Yes. Well, what is preventable—
Chair: In your view—you come here
as an expert and you've been very helpful so far—what could
have been prevented?
Professor Ashton:
I think you have to distinguish between the specific events and
violence prevention more generally, out of which this event will
have grown. I think that's the problem for people, conceptually,
to get their heads around. I think the role of the media is terribly
important in these events. One of the colleagues that I was with
when this happened has headed up the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention: injury and violence prevention centre in America,
for the last 10 years. I discussed it with him extensively and
he has extensive experience of all the mass shootings in America.
So we were able to draw on some of that knowledge and insight
and feed it into Cumbria from a distance. The point I want to
make, which builds on Jamie Reed's point, is that I don't think
this event would have happened if there hadn't been the mass media
sensationalist coverage of the—
Chair: That is post, isn't it?
Professor Ashton:
—of the Columbine shootings and these other things.
Chair: I see.
Professor Ashton:
This is the context, and the media coverage of this event will
have sown the seeds for another event somewhere else in the world,
because of the global satellite coverage and the sensationalisation
of it. That's a big strand of this that needs to be addressed
bearing in mind that, within a few weeks, there was another similar
kind of thing in Northumberland. So, it's now the failure of people
to be able to distinguish between reality television and 24 hour
news coverage and intrusive sensationalism, and descending on
Cumbria as if it was a war zone with the anchor people from the
main shows—
Q167 Chair: What
is the way around it? It's a fascinating explanation.
Professor Ashton:
I think there needs to be a code of practice, basically. I think
there needs to be a code of practice.
Chair: For whom? The media?
Professor Ashton:
Yes, for the media. When these major things happen I think there
needs to be a code of practice.
Another major thing where I think there is a
possibility to learn lessons and do something, I think access
to method is terribly important, for injury and violence. And
remember guns are involved in accidents and suicide, as well as
homicide, and the availability of guns in households, we've heard—
Chair: We have further questions on this,
which I hope you'll find of interest.
Q168 Mark Reckless: Professor
Ashton, I just wanted to question you about the issue of GP notification.
We had, I think, the IPCC recommending that there should be a
check with a GP, which, on my understanding, was to give the GP
the opportunity to notify anything that hadn't been disclosed
that should have been. Since then there seems to have been an
agreement between ACPO and BMA, which, at least to my mind, seems
to go further than that and seems to be a tagging of an individual
record for the GP to proactively raise material, either then or
if it develops at a future date. What are your thoughts about
that procedure?
Professor Ashton:
Well, my thoughts are informed also by conversation with one of
our other medical directors in the Primary Care Trust, who was
a GP in West Cumbria and has extensive experience of this issue
in the past, and what we between us have concluded on that is
that a lot of GPs are very unhappy about being in a position of
having to sign off this licence procedure, when they've had no
training for it and where they feel that they are potentially
at risk because they're not trained in risk assessment. So there's
a lot of insecurity and unhappiness about that.
What we think is that there should be a limited
number of GPs who have specialist expertise and that people should
not be signing off their own patients, because it can be very
difficult to refuse your own patient. I think that's the sort
of thing that needs to be looked at.
Q169 Mark Reckless:
Are the GPs more concerned that they may be going a bit too close
to disclosing confidential information, or they may be missing
something and not understanding the type of medical issue that
could lead to a problem with a gun?
Professor Ashton:
I think these issues of sharing clinical information have been
worked through in recent years. I've had to work closely with
the police myself on confidential information from the health
service, and so on, and I think there's a more sophisticated approach
to that now. I think there's recognition that if there is a danger
to the public, then there's a requirement of disclosure under
certain circumstances. But I think if the signing off GP is not
the patient's GP and can access clinical records, then that takes
some of the problematic side of this out.
I was going to say, there was no evidence that Bird
had psychiatric problems.
Q170 Chair: But
he did have criminal convictions?
Professor Ashton:
Yes, and that's another issue. But what I'm saying is that what
we've heard this morning so far is quite anecdotal, notwithstanding
the importance of the testimony. But the evidence base for risk
assessment is not in place. There is some of it here in this global
review.
Chair: It would be extremely
helpful if you could apply that excellent document there to the
facts of this case and let us have a note.
Q171 Alun Michael: I'm
convinced of the value of taking a public health approach, and
you may be aware we had evidence, only last week, from Professor
Jonathan Shepherd about the approach to violence in Cardiff.
Professor Ashton:
Yes. I know Jonathan Shepherd.
Alun Michael: Can we approach it from
the other side then and ask the question: how could we use a public
health perspective to look at the system of gun controls in this
country, and are there any changes that you would recommend in
the way that we deal with that issue?
Professor Ashton:
I think that I would come back to access to method; with violence
and injury it's access to method and the method in this case is
guns and ammunition. There is evidence of other countries having
different approaches and having had an impact on levels of gun
violence by having different thresholds of age, for example, and
other methods.
Q172 Alun Michael: Forgive
me, with all that knowledge and background, are there recommendations
you would make for the way that we might change the way we control
guns in this country?
Professor Ashton:
The single, practical thing I would say is that the medical certification
side should be reframed, in the way that I just mentioned earlier.
Q173 Dr Huppert: Have
you had a chance to look at the ACPO Report through today?
Professor Ashton:
No.
Dr Huppert: I'd be very
interested in your responses—although you haven't read it,
and I'm sure you will. The things which I thought were interesting
were, firstly, a comment that: "The details of these circumstances
do not give rise to any immediately obvious changes that need
to be made, either in the Cumbria constabulary or in law, such
as would have readily prevented the offences from being committed".
It then goes on to say that there are a number of changes that
are considered would improve public safety more widely in this
area, but they're not directly related to these events. Those
involve formal data links—as we've just been discussing—with
the GP, mental health and police services, inquiry of the applicant's
GP, funded by the applicant, talking to the applicant's family
at grant and renewal, and having a single type of certificate
for both firearms and shotguns.
Do you have any thoughts about whether that
is what you expected to hear from ACPO, what you thought would
be helpful? How much notice should we take of this?
Chair: If we have a brief response from
each one of you that would be helpful.
Mr Reed: I think
we should take significant notice of it. I do think it's a starting
point. I don't think it's an exhaustive detailed end point. Could
the killer have killed as many people, in the time that he killed
them, with one weapon and less ammunition? That question isn't
answered. There are significant questions raised by the report
still, which I think need to be answered by a question from this
Committee.
Chair: Indeed. Rev Lee, you haven't seen
it?
Rev Lee: No.
Chair: So it's difficult
for you. Professor, have you seen it?
Professor Ashton:
I haven't seen it, no.
Q174 Chair:
We're very grateful to ACPO, it's just that they published it
on the day you're giving evidence, so you've not had an opportunity
to see it. But we will have the Chief Constable in, and it would
be very helpful if you could read that report and let the Committee
know your views, so we can put some of these views to ACPO and
the Chief Constable when he comes in.
I have a final question for you, Rev Lee. When I
was up there in Cumbria you were debating the kind of memorial
that you wanted for those who had died and been injured; have
you all decided what kind of memorial you want?
Rev Lee: Copeland
is a very diverse area and they have not, and what is appropriate
in one part of the borough is not appropriate in another. In a
very small village where there were two murders, they want very
little to be seen on their streets because it become dominant
and domineering, whereas there are moves now towards thinking
of perhaps some form of distinct memorial in a place—what
we are going to do, I think what is happening, is that when the
anniversary of this event comes around it wants to be remembered
with positivity, giving thanks for the lives of those people who
lived, not remembering how they died. So I think there's a great
move in the whole community to do something to lift people's morale
at that time. So that's what's happening. On further details,
I'm unsighted, but could I just say a couple of things?
Chair: Very briefly.
Rev Lee: I would
like to say that when I dealt with the press I found them not
rude or intrusive, as long as I was straightforward and to the
point, and they backed off very quickly. Also, I would like to
pay tribute to all those people who stepped in as volunteers to
help people on the day; extremely bravely. Copeland being so isolated,
the ambulance service was just impossible but there were some
very brave individuals who have now gone back into the twilight
and I think they've done amazingly well and I pay tribute to them
indeed.
Chair: Yes, Mr Reed, very quickly.
Mr Reed: One final
point, Mr Vaz. As a parent, there are tighter controls on the
number of bottles of Calpol I can buy at any one time in the supermarket
than there are on the rounds of ammunition I can buy as the owner
of a 22 rifle. That cannot be right.
Chair: Indeed. What would be extremely
helpful: we are looking to the future, obviously, to try and prevent
this kind of thing happening again. If you have any suggestions
of ways in which the Committee can do this, we would very much
appreciate your comments. We hope to have our report, subject
to the progress of Committee business, by Christmas of this year,
and we hope it is a report that is worthy of the people who lost
their lives. Thank you very much for coming today.
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