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Lord Kimball: If the Committee adds Amendment No. 39 to the Bill, we shall be able to build on what has already been achieved for pistol shooting. We should bear in mind that in another place the Government have already undertaken to give compensation for ancillary equipment used by the larger calibre revolvers. That is the equipment mostly used by the hand loaders. Some of it is extremely expensive. It has been a great relief to many people to know that that compensation is agreed. It is also agreed that someone who owns a .22 rimfire pistol, which will be legal in future, but can no longer find a pistol range which is still operative in his own area, will be entitled to receive compensation.
Amendment No. 39 in particular deals not so much with compensation but with a fair and just payment for what amounts to confiscation. If someone's livelihood has been removed and that person has been injuriously affected, the principles of compulsory purchase apply 100 per cent. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury has already quoted the statement from the European Court of Human Rights.
In another place the Government argued that many legislative actions do not necessarily justify compensation. Cars which fail the MoT test were mentioned. If one buys a cheap car, one accepts the risk that it will probably fail the MoT test in the not too distant future. Fire precautions were mentioned. Many boarding houses receive substantial grants from tourist boards and other development authorities towards updating their fire precautions and noise abatement arrangements. The point is that people with a car or a boarding house that suffered a fire or a factory with noise level requirements all have the option of continuing their business in a modified form. The pistol shooters have no option because their ranges are confiscated.
There is one other helpful thing that the noble Baroness could do or might be encouraged to say today. I believe that many of these ranges need not be
compensated for if, rather than the ranges themselves being fortified so that the .22 pistols can be kept there, the guns are allowed to be kept at the premises of the local gun dealers. Many of them own the ranges and their premises are already fortified and up to standard. Without that concession, we are in fact confiscating a very large number of facilities for which people deserve full and proper compensation.
Lord Burton: Let me raise two small points on the issue of compensation for weapons. We might perhaps obtain some enlightenment on the subject.
A club may feel that it should try to remain open and comply with the new regulations. But planning may well take a considerable time and finally be turned down; or perhaps after some considerable time there may be another reason why it would not be able to carry on. Eventually, surely, the members of that club will not be able to get any compensation for their weapons because the period of time will have expired. I wonder whether that is fair.
There is also the question of who will do the valuation for the weapons when they come in and how long it will take. I suspect that that may take quite a considerable time. I feel that this matter should be looked at.
Lord Monson: I should like, somewhat anticlimactically, to speak to my Amendments Nos. 81 and 82, which find themselves in this enormous grouping, before I turn to the somewhat more important amendment, Amendment No. 40.
The purpose of Amendments Nos. 81 and 82 is to ensure that owners of .22 pistols, who find that they have to surrender them because their clubs cannot afford the extremely expensive security systems that the Bill will oblige them to install, are compensated at market value in the same way as owners of larger bore pistols will be compensated. It is true that the Home Secretary has apparently said that they will be compensated on an ex gratia basis and, what is more, at market value. But it is surely more normal and proper to write such a guarantee formally into the Bill.
Furthermore, I understand that nothing has been said so far about compensation for accessories for those .22 pistols, accessories which in some instances may have cost more than the pistol itself. So I look to the noble Baroness, when she comes to reply, for cast iron guarantees on proper compensation for both .22 pistols and their accessories.
Without minimising in any way the undoubted merits of Amendments Nos. 31 to 36, so brilliantly moved by my noble friend Lord Lytton, I turn to Amendment No. 40. On 24th October of last year in her winding-up speech at the end of the first day's debate on the gracious speech, referring specifically to the proposed firearms Bill which a number of the speakers had mentioned, the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, stated categorically:
- "We shall compensate both"--
- "owners and dealers".--[Official Report, 24/10/96; col. 98.]
From time to time most of us make off-the-cuff assertions which cannot later be sustained--Ministers, by the nature of their heavy workload, more so than most of us--but this is not one of those occasions. The speech which concentrated most upon firearms finished one hour and 20 minutes before the statement of the noble Baroness regarding compensation for dealers, so clearly civil servants had vetted it and may even have drafted it. For this reason I believe that the Government have a constitutional as well as a moral obligation to compensate dealers for the collapse of their businesses through no fault of their own.
Earl Peel: I have my name down to Amendment No. 40 with my noble friend Lord Gisborough. I should like to speak to that amendment, although I say first of all that I have very considerable sympathy for Amendment No. 39 in the name of my noble friend Lord Swansea.
I start by saying that I agree with my noble friend Lord Kimball when he welcomes the fact that the Government have introduced increased compensation for certain aspects of firearms and accessories. We very much welcome that but, as other noble Lords have already said, there is no shadow of doubt that this Bill is going to bring great hardship and great difficulty to many businesses.
I appreciate that this is a very difficult subject and the rules, if indeed there are any, are blurred. To what extent the Government should be responsible for compensation to businesses due to direct legislation is in fact an extremely difficult point, and I understand the Government's problems. I understand the difficulties we have in trying to reach a compromise on this matter.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, gave some very good examples, as he would, being a thoroughly professional person who understands these things in a way that I certainly do not. I was very much taken by some of the examples that the noble Earl gave. However, it is fair to say that, generally speaking, in the past when businesses have been closed down for whatever reason they have had time to adjust. In this case gun trades and gun businesses have had no opportunity whatsoever to do so. It is a simple fact that so far as many are concerned there will be no product and, indeed, there will be no customer. We cannot lose sight of that fact.
It has been argued that businesses which will suffer from the outlawing of large calibre handguns will find alternative markets, switching to .22 calibre weapons. This is extremely unlikely, for two main reasons. First, the security regulations attached to new licensed clubs will deter many potential members. Secondly, there are likely to be many fewer clubs because of the expense of having to comply with these new regulations.
I have declared an interest during the course of this Bill on a number of occasions in that I am president of the Gun Trade Association. I attended a meeting in Birmingham before the Bill came before your Lordships' House and I have spoken to many of these people whose businesses are going to suffer under this Bill--real people, not just fictitious names, but people who are genuinely going to suffer from this Bill. There are businesses that have been built up over years, in some cases over generations. They find it quite incredible that their very livelihoods can be affected in such a way, affected, as they see it, by a madman and by a system that failed purely because the existing law was not adhered to, through no fault of their own. I am bound to say that they find it equally incredible that they will suffer through what they perceive as hasty legislation, with no consultation and no time to make any adjustment, as I said earlier. Also, they find it quite extraordinary that a learned Lord's studious recommendations on this particular matter have been ignored.
We must not lose sight of the fact that, in addition to straightforward business activities, there are mortgages and loans which will have to be met. These will have a heavy bearing on a number of people. Precedent or no precedent, I believe that we have to look at every single case in its entirety. This is a different case, and I firmly believe that given the circumstances in which we find ourselves we have a moral obligation to help these people. I wholeheartedly support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Gisborough.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I, too, have put my name to Amendment No. 40 and, like the noble Earl, Lord Peel, I have considerable sympathy with other amendments dealing with compensation to pistol owners and to clubs. However, as I made perfectly clear in my Second Reading speech, I am no expert in these matters; nor, indeed, do I represent any interest. What I do know is that over the past days and weeks I have received shoals of letters from perfectly ordinary people who are concerned about their sport and the losses that they will incur personally and that their businesses will incur as a result of this legislation, which I believe to be considerably unjust. That is why I have taken an interest. I am not a shooter, as I said; I never have been a shooter and I am never likely to be a shooter.
What I am concerned about, and what every other Member of this House should be concerned about, is that legislation should be just and it should be fair. This legislation is neither. It was conceived in haste and it was cobbled together in response to a campaign based on emotion; it was understandable emotion, but nevertheless it was based on emotion rather than on logic, fairness and rationality. That is why I believe we should have given a lot more consideration to this in the House of Commons and in this House. Indeed, the Government should have given it a lot more consideration over a much longer period of time before they brought it to Parliament in the first place. There has been no time and little effort has been made to
consult with those who will be most hurt financially by this Bill by the loss of value of their pistols, by the bankruptcy of their clubs and, worst of all, the loss of businesses and, with the businesses, jobs. We ought all to be concerned--indeed, we are all concerned--about the loss of business and the loss of jobs.The suggested compensation arrangements, as far as they are known, will be grossly inadequate. They will be tantamount, as some other noble Lords have mentioned, in some respects to simple confiscation. I find that odd coming from a Conservative Government. It would not come from a Labour Government. I am sure that Members of the Committee opposite will have that point very much in mind.
I cannot believe that the people of Dunblane or the newspapers which have campaigned for this legislation would want, in addition to the severe restriction of the sport of pistol shooting, to see people's assets slashed, their businesses destroyed and gunsmiths thrown onto the unemployment scrapheap. We have to come back to the fact that Dunblane was the result of the actions of a madman who would not have possessed legally held firearms but for the neglect and misjudgment of a senior policeman. We must keep on making the point that it was not the guns that killed; it was the man who pulled the trigger who killed and had the intention to kill. We must never forget that.
Can it really be the action of a democratic society as a result of those actions of that madman, that ordinary, decent law-abiding citizens should be disadvantaged in every possible way, especially since they have not been consulted and the Bill has been rushed through the House of Commons--indeed, rushed into print--without proper consideration?
I think it is extraordinary that I, as a Labour Member--and not a "new Labour" Member but a straight Labour Member to boot--should have to nag and chivvy a Conservative Government to pay proper compensation to the very sort of people whom one would expect the Government to support. I sincerely hope that the noble Baroness will take account of everything that has been said. Although I believe that the Bill is awful and unjust, I hope that the Government will at least agree to pay compensation--proper and adequate compensation--to all those who are being and will be disadvantaged by it.
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