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Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Baroness referred to the courtesy with which this debate has been carried out. That is true. With her patience she has been instrumental in bringing that about. I am sure that all of us who have taken part in the debate will thank her for that. It is remarkable that the debate has been so good natured. We have been talking not only about the loss of a sport enjoyed by tens of thousands of people but also the livelihoods of many thousands of people who are employed in this activity. Bearing in mind those facts, the House is to be congratulated on discussing this Bill in such a calm and good-humoured way. It says a lot for the House and its procedures that it has been able to do so.

Two thousand five hundred years ago Pericles said that the worst thing to do was to rush into action before the consequences had been properly debated. That wise dictum was ignored by Her Majesty's Government. As a result, in my view we have a thoroughly bad Bill. Why do I say that? Following Dunblane, the Government set up the Cullen Inquiry to examine what had happened and what was to be done. But they refused to allow this House, another place or the country to debate that Bill. That was where the mistake arose. For that reason the Government would have been much wiser to follow the dictum of Pericles. They could have had a widespread debate in Parliament and out in the country before action was taken to draft the Bill. The Government acted before the consequences had been properly debated

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without a proper opportunity for consultation with those affected, let alone to receive representations from those affected, in the light of the Cullen Report and the public and parliamentary debate that should have taken place on it. Statesmanship demands careful consideration of the effects of action, including legislative action. Failure to understand that gives rise to very baleful consequences and often grave injustice. That is precisely what has happened in the case of this Bill.

The death toll and the manner of the killings in Dunblane were dreadful. It was a dreadful tragedy. But we must return again and again to a point that has been made so often in this debate and elsewhere: it was the action of a madman that killed those poor little children and their teacher. Guns were merely the instrument. On 16th December I said that 26 children were killed and 500 injured every month on the roads. I should like to develop that. Since the 16th December when this Bill was debated on Second Reading 500 people have been killed and 8,500 people have been injured on the roads. In spite of that the Government are considering increasing the weight of lorries from 38 to 44 tonnes. That will not decrease but increase deaths on the road. The Government should consider that very seriously. What they are saying is that whereas in one instance where innocent people are killed they will take such action as they believe will prevent it, in another instance they will take action that will exacerbate it.

This is a thoroughly bad Bill. I hope that the Commons will take note of what has been done in this House, which has undoubtedly improved the Bill. But I say to those who will be affected--like other noble Lords, I have received hundreds of letters to which I cannot reply but for which I am extremely grateful--that a Bill that is passed into law can also be repealed. So when they feel, as they will feel, a continued injustice, they should not lie down under that injustice, they should continue to fight against it until they can have it put right. That is what parliamentary government is all about. They, like other people, should fight their corner; and, eventually, if they are right, they will prove their point. My confidence in democracy is such that I believe that in the end they will win.

7 p.m.

Lord Swansea: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, reminded us that our House is a revising Chamber. We have done our best through the passage of the Bill to make it a bit more comfortable to live with, although we have not been able to stop the main thrust of the Bill. We are grateful to the Government for having taken note of the points that have been raised at previous stages. I must express my appreciation to my noble friend the Minister for the nice and charming way in which she has dealt with the Bill. I do not blame her for the Bill. She was only doing what she was told to do by her superiors. The advice she was given was often wrong in our eyes, but she did very well.

That does not alter the fact that this is a thoroughly bad Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said. It will not improve public safety one iota. If the Government and the Opposition want to improve public safety, they had better turn their attention to the vast reservoir of

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weapons held illegally by the criminal element. Public safety would be improved if that were eliminated. To take these weapons out of the hands of law abiding people and to destroy them, to deprive them of their recreation, and to ruin our chances in international competition, is a different matter altogether. That is what the Government have done in the Bill. I shall end now as I ended my speech on Second Reading: when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Blatch said two rather interesting things in her opening remarks when she suggested that the Bill should now pass. First, she said that the Government remain unconvinced about the disassembly or segregation amendments that your Lordships passed. I have to say that I think she really meant that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is unconvinced. I fear that the Cabinet is guilty of giving in to his special pleading. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend the Minister to suggest to her right honourable friends in the Cabinet that when they come to consider our amendments, they must deal with the fact that the public is much safer under our disassembly amendment with guns segregated, than they will be with arsenals of weapons all over the country.

That is why I find another thing my noble friend said strange. She said that the Bill would provide the public with the reassurance that it deserves. This Bill should not provide any such reassurance. I cannot see why it is likely to save a single life; but, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and other noble Lords have said, it will ruin thousands of small businesses; it will deprive thousands of people of their hobby; and, worst of all, I fear that it certainly will not prevent another Dunblane. I say that because--to repeat--it penalises the instrument used in that terrible tragedy, but that instrument was not its cause.

This Bill does little new for the cause, it will merely tighten up the existing procedures which failed at Dunblane with such tragic results. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said that the Labour Party supports the Bill. So I have another question for the Minister which I should be grateful if she would pass on to her right honourable friends in the Cabinet. When will they come to realise that when they carry legislation in your Lordships' House with the support of the Benches opposite, they are likely to be wrong?

Lord Mottistone: Certainly.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, certainly. In my brief six years' experience, it is certainly. Of course my sympathy goes out to my noble friend the Minister. She has done her courteous best with an extremely bad Bill. For myself, I have to confess to a feeling of shame for having had anything at all to do with it.

Lord Monson: My Lords, perhaps I may, first, enlarge briefly upon a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Peel. Not only did the support of noble Lords on the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches enable us to win the compensation amendment, without the support

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of courageous Labour Peers, Liberal Democrats, and a right reverend Prelate, we should not have won the disassembly amendment either. Perhaps I, too, may pay tribute to the noble Baroness the Minister for her patience, stamina, good humour and willingness to listen carefully to opposing points of view, even if ultimately those opposing points of view were rarely accommodated. That is not to say that we are not extremely grateful for the rare concessions made.

As the noble Lord, Lord Swansea, reminded us, it is a bad Bill. The overwhelming feeling in the House at Second Reading, and not only in the House, was that it was a bad Bill for many reasons already set out by a number of noble Lords. The amendments passed by your Lordships make it a somewhat less bad Bill. I trust that common sense and a sense of fair play will prevail in the other place when the Bill returns to it, and that our amendments will be accepted. I said common sense and a sense of fair play: common sense, because disassembly is a safer option as well as being cheaper for the taxpayer.

Mass produced repeating pistols have been around for about 140 years (five generations). From that, one can calculate that the statistical chances of being murdered by a psychopath with a legally held pistol are already thankfully extremely low at about 15 million:1. The Bill as drafted might reduce that to, let us say, 20 million:1, but disassembly, I submit, might very well reduce it substantially further to 30 million:1, given that there would then be no complete fully assembled legal pistols to steal.

Now to the question of fair play which in this context means fair compensation for clubs, associations and businesses. It has been argued that where businesses lose money because of some vital new safety consideration, compensation is not normally paid. But in reality the Bill has very little to do with public safety and everything to do with public relations. It could be compared with the slaughter, without any scientific justification, of hundreds of thousands of perfectly healthy British cattle, not for genuine safety reasons but in order to appease hypochondriac German and other continental consumers. Generous compensation has rightly been granted not just to dairy farmers and those with beef herds but to others such as renderers. One trusts that the other place will agree, in logic and fairness, that the same principle should apply to gun clubs, dealers and manufacturers.

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