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Lord Campbell of Alloway: I make only a short intervention. I find myself in some difficulty because I consider the whole conceptual basis of the Bill to be flawed. I do not agree with it. I take the view that these guns are freely available and any lunatic can obtain one. The Bill is a bad Bill.
Having said that, on the merits of what has been said by Members of the Committee I suppose it is honourable, notwithstanding my views, to support the amendment as the best that can be done in these sad circumstances.
Lord Marlesford: I do not intend to become involved in the technical aspects of the amendment; I am not an expert. I listened carefully to my noble friend Lord Pearson and found his arguments to be convincing. Also, I read the correspondence dealing with these matters that many of us received.
I support the amendment on a different aspect of the Bill. It is my deep regret that the Government, in not following Cullen, have committed themselves to public spending of, we are told, at least £150 million in compensation. That is public spending the details of which I suspect they had not worked out at the time they took the line that they took of rejecting Cullen. It is expenditure which could rise considerably because we are aware that many in this Chamber--I have some sympathy with them--will be introducing amendments to increase the terms of compensation.
I hope my noble friend, when she tells us why the amendment is to be rejected, will tell us how much money would be saved if it were accepted. The opportunity cost of these enormous sums cannot be justified by the marginal, if any, increase in risk that may result from accepting the amendment. It is therefore on a purely pragmatic, financial basis that I urge the Committee to accept it.
I almost wonder whether Mr. Gordon Brown, who I know has hopes of having some responsibility for the public finances of this country himself in a few weeks, would not, if he were here in spirit, be hoping to use those millions of pounds for a better purpose than is proposed under the Bill as drafted.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Ernest Bevin, when told that Herbert Morrison was his worst enemy, said, "Not while I am alive, he ain't". I can assure the noble Lord that while I am here, Gordon Brown is here is spirit.
Lord Brain: I disagree with two points made earlier in the debate. But I wholeheartedly support the amendment. If the main part of the pistol is stored in an individual's home, that individual is then able to keep the other parts, if he wishes, in two separate clubs. I believe that side by side pistol shooting is one of the aspects of competitive sport and he can therefore shoot against two different groups of people.
If the amendment should be adopted in any form at a later stage, I hope the fact that storing the weapons in one specific way will not necessarily inhibit their use at more than one club when, if they were stored in a different way, that would be prohibited.
Lord Swansea: I support the amendment. The principle involved--the principle of dispersal--is one I fully advocate--I practice it myself with rifles. I do not shoot pistols, but I own a number of rifles. They
are stored with their bolts removed and the bolts kept elsewhere. It is a sensible idea which many people follow and I recommend it.
- "the slide assembly or cylinder shall be held on the premises of a licensed pistol club, and ... the remainder of the weapon shall be stored at different premises which shall be specified on the certificate granted for that pistol".
The proposal to impel pistols to be stored assembled in a central store is ludicrous. The cost to a club would be enormous and it would not be able to afford it. It may well have to close down. The amendment provides an infinitely preferable way and, as I said, one that I practise myself. I hope that the Government will accept it one way or the other.
If one removes the slide or cylinder from a pistol, one is left with two lumps of metal which are useless individually. The only way one could hurt somebody with them is to throw them at them. On their own, disassembled, they are harmless and I therefore support the amendment.
7.15 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: First, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, referred to the full discussion of this issue being heard on the Floor of the House. In this very debate there are experts in the Chamber and some of us who are not experts but who have taken expert advice before coming to this stage of the Bill and, indeed, I continue to take expert advice. We will all go away and read what has been said today and will continue to do that throughout the course of the Bill. It will not be the first time that experts have disagreed about a single subject. Taking the debate off the Floor of the House and inviting a variety of experts to come in and debate it will not necessarily guarantee that they will come to different conclusions.
My noble friend Lord Marlesford referred to costs. I do not have a precise answer for him because we have not produced a costing of the option put forward to me by my noble friend except to say that, unless we were to reduce the security of the gun clubs considerably--in other words, make them easy targets to walk into and obtain disassembled barrels or sliding parts of a gun or to obtain the deactivated gun--we would invalidate the purpose of the amendment. If the gun clubs were sufficiently secure to carry parts of the gun, there would have to be set up a considerable bureaucracy to police on a daily basis the management of parts of guns being outside the club and other parts being inside the club and the people with multi-membership of clubs. That would be at considerable cost. However, I take the point being made by my noble friend. He believes that there would be considerable savings; I do not.
We do not deny that many pistols can be disassembled by removing some essential component such as the slide or cylinder. However, as Lord Cullen said himself at paragraph 9.86 of his report:
- "in the case particularly of many high precision .22 pistols the removal of the slide was not recommended unless the gun malfunctioned and required disassembly for cleaning. Repeated disassembly involved disruption of carefully tuned components and would very quickly impair the accuracy for which they were designed. Such pistols were not developed for military service and the ease of dismantling played little if any part as a consideration in their design."
However, it was not primarily for that reason that we rejected the option of storing component parts of pistols at clubs. The main reason for rejecting this option was that we do not believe that any form of disassembly would provide a guaranteed measure of assurance against the possible misuse of the pistol by a determined and motivated individual.
As the Committee will be aware, we have received advice from the Forensic Science Service on the subject of disassembly and copies of two letters of advice have been placed in the Library of the House. I have noted what a number of noble Lords have said about that advice, but I would like to quote again from the second of those letters for the benefit of those Members of the Committee who have not had the opportunity to read it. It says:
- "Some individuals will possess more than one set of barrel and slide components for their pistol, or will possess components which will allow the calibre of the weapon to be converted by the simple substitution of components. Unless the [pistol] club employs a qualified armourer to confirm the bona fide of items at the time of transfer for storage who is also fully aware of the extent of ownership of such accessories by their membership, a person could still possess a complete weapon at home even after complying with the regulations.
- A pistol owner intent upon misusing his pistol for a criminal act could obtain major components which would pass general inspection standards prior to secure club storage. The purchase of an officially deactivated firearm of the same make and model as that held on his certificate could be done without the need for police authorisation and would provide outwardly convincing components to be substituted at the time of purchase.
- The frames of some pistols are specifically fabricated so that the owner can purchase a comprehensive range of barrels of different lengths and cartridge chamberings, which can be simply substituted and fitted at the will of the user. This again could lead to the situation where a person would be in the possession of a complete firearm after appearing to comply with club regulations".
Allowing this amendment for .22 pistols, my noble friend has suggested, is bound to lead to calls for disassembly for high calibre guns as well. Because of the arguments set out I believe that that would be an unacceptable escalation towards what I regard as an even more dangerous position for the public. For these reasons, we are unable to accept the amendment.
I repeat what I have said throughout the course of this debate. I shall continue reading the pages of Hansard and what has been said throughout this debate. I shall continue
to take advice and talk with colleagues, officials and experts on these matters. I hope that that will be a continuing process until the Bill passes into statute.
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