Law Enforcement and Security (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for introducing this legislation. I was initially thrown by the language. I shudder to think how much time I spent trying to figure out exactly what an explosives precursor was. Basically, it is a chemical compound that can be used in explosives.

Given that, in the history of Northern Ireland, virtually all terrorists seem, at times, to have resorted to home-made explosives, these regulations seem extremely sensible and I can see no real objection to them. However, it would be good to know how the fertiliser bomb fits into the regulations. Are such chemicals trigger mechanisms or accelerants? A little more detail would be helpful, if the noble Viscount has it. If not, perhaps he would write to me.

The noble Viscount may already have answered my next question—what do you do about weapons such as target rifles, which can be carried around? These weapons are potentially lethal, even if they are not the most efficient way of hurting someone. They fire a projectile at great pace and with great accuracy over a long distance.

I am trying to extract a little more information, which, having listened to what the noble Viscount said, is not quite fair. Nevertheless, how can we make sure that it will be possible to travel with such a weapon between Great Britain and the continent or Ireland? Are there any legal barriers or other stages that have to be gone through if you are competing across the whole of Great Britain and in Europe, for instance, and not just in Ireland? It would be interesting to know that, because it will affect people, especially at the elite end of that sport. The same can be said of sporting guns—shotguns et cetera—that are used for shooting game. How do they fit in, and what hurdles does one have to jump through? I do not dispute the fact that there should be some but it would be nice to hear what they are.

Perhaps I might be allowed to put my toe into slightly more controversial water. Would these weapons be affected if, for instance, the amendments that we passed to the internal market Bill were kept, or would the situation change if we went back to the original Bill? It might be interesting to hear that when the noble Viscount sums up. With that caveat, I give moderate approval to the regulations.