Offensive Weapons Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I am glad to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who I know has very personal experience of these issues.

As a London MP, I welcome the Bill as a vital tool in the fight against the kinds of violent crime that are sadly increasing across the capital. While overall crime continues to fall, knife crime, gun crime and homicide are unfortunately on the rise, and we are seeing lives torn apart by utterly senseless violence, as the age profile of both victims and perpetrators shifts lower. Although some of that increase can be attributed to improvements in police recording, changes in the illegal drugs trade seem to be driving the other part of the trend. Criminal gangs have been adapting their business model to exploit previously untapped markets beyond inner London, using vulnerable young people as distributors, and upping their violence and intimidation to break into new territory. Meanwhile, there was a record number of acid attacks in London last year. I therefore welcome the fact that the Bill bans the sale of the most dangerous corrosive products to under-18s, and criminalises the possession of corrosive substances in a public place.

As the fear of crime rises in tandem with those trends, too many young people are choosing to arm themselves, which is why the Bill introduces tough new restrictions on the online sales of knives. It will also become illegal to possess certain offensive weapons in private, including zombie knives and knuckle-dusters. To assist prosecutions, clause 26 amends the legal test regarding threats made with an illegal weapon.

As many Members have pointed out, the Bill is not a panacea, and the Government recognise that. Legislation and policing must be complemented by cross-agency working that involves schools, social services and communities. Such a partnership lies at the heart of the Government’s serious violence strategy, whereby Home Office funding will knit together a cohesive, cross-departmental approach to violent crime. I hope that that approach will include consideration of the worrying rise in school exclusions. Criminals are feeding on vulnerable young people who are falling out of the system. With the number of secondary permanent exclusions climbing for the fourth consecutive year, too many students are being taught in pupil referral units. We need new core schools to sit between mainstream schools and those units, working hand in glove with social services to support vulnerable pupils.

I am also concerned about the fact that local authorities are overstretched owing to outdated assumptions about need. My borough of Havering is dealing with the fastest-growing number of children of any London authority. In fulfilling statutory duties towards vulnerable youngsters, the council is left with little cash proactively to address other problems affecting that group and their families, such as addiction. Meanwhile, the pressures on social workers are leading to additional demand on police. One of my local officers says that he is now being called more regularly to tackle matters that are best handled by trained social workers.

The Mayor of London’s first reaction to rising violence on his watch seems always to be to blame the Government for his funding settlement, but money cannot be a substitute for strategy. The Mayor must turn urgently to a review of performance, operations and tactics, and the building of better collaborative partnerships across London to mimic the success of our mayoral team in halving teen knife deaths between 2008 and 2011 at a time of budgetary constraint. None the less, I am not so naive as to discount resourcing as a problem. More money has been provided by the Home Office for counter-terrorism duties, and the Mayor is now able to increase his precept substantially. There are more efficiencies to be found from the new technologies that are finally being deployed. The Government must, however, acknowledge that the demand on police in London is increasing rapidly.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend rightly notes, resourcing is an issue, but it is equally important to ensure that we get enough bang for our buck. In that context, does she agree that putting more police officers on bikes, which enables them to be visible but also to cover a great deal of ground—particularly in a constituency that is flat, such as Cheltenham—is basically a good idea?

[Julia Lopez]

That does indeed sound like, basically, a good idea. I think everyone agrees that police visibility is vital to maintaining the trust of the community, and to the sharing of intelligence.

The variety of issues that the police are being asked to tackle is becoming ever broader, and rapid demographic and technological changes are spreading the challenges across more boroughs. To put it simply, we need more resources, whether that means officers on the ground or analysts who can track and understand trends. My policing team has said that one of the big problems across the Met is the reduction in the number of analysts at Scotland Yard who can spot where crimes are happening and deploy resources accordingly.

We must also give officers the confidence that they will be backed in using the powers available to them. I have raised these issues at a high level within Government and encourage the Met and Home Office together to take a firm grip and disrupt the criminal gang networks relentlessly. Recent media reports suggest that the takeover of the crack cocaine market by Albanian mafia is partly responsible for a new wave of violence, so how are we working with authorities in Albania and other countries to ensure the swift deportation of violent criminals from these shores?

On a parochial level, I am concerned that the Mayor’s policing assumptions are not keeping up with the change under way in London’s suburbs. It is not surprising that the fear of crime in my constituency is high, even if violent crime levels are comparatively low. In neighbouring Romford, where many teenagers from my constituency shop and socialise, we saw at the weekend the needless stabbing to death of a 15-year-old schoolboy, and knives have recently been wielded openly in the local shopping centre.

The trust of a community in the responsiveness of police is vital to ensuring local intelligence is shared and crime kept low. That trust is being lost due to problems in reporting, particularly through the 101 service. The initial problems in police response times following the Mayor’s tri-borough policing restructure seemed to have been resolved, but the community distrust was then compounded by the planned closure of Hornchurch police station.

Without that physical presence, residents are understandably concerned that town centres in my constituency will be neglected so as to tackle the growing problems in Romford, Barking, East Ham and elsewhere. In the meantime, our borough is attempting to purchase the police station from the Mayor and provide community space for police elsewhere, and the Mayor ought to be encouraging more of this kind of community partnership work.

Finally, I offered to raise concerns put to me by constituents about the provisions in the Bill on rifles, as eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). One resident, a retired police officer and someone who represented our country in shooting, is concerned that the prohibition of certain firearms is a tokenistic response disproportionate to the risk. Other constituents advise that no legally owned rifle of the types this Bill prohibits has ever been used in criminal activity despite being used by target shooters for many decades. They are unconvinced by the Home Office’s evidential base for this move and feel therefore that this proposed legislation amounts to an abuse of process. I hope some of these issues will be ironed out in Committee.

Those concerns aside, however, I broadly welcome the Bill in providing us with another tool to tackle violent crime. But we must all be mindful not ever to see legislation as a cure-all. This urgent task requires the right laws, the right policing tactics, the right resource, the right punishment and the right partnership work to drive this scourge from our communities.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I begin by thanking the Minister for crime, safeguarding and vulnerability for taking time out of a very busy diary to meet me recently to discuss the Bill in greater detail. The opportunity to raise some matters of specific concern to my constituents was much appreciated.

I, along with Plaid Cymru, welcome the Bill and support the Government’s desire to control the purchase and possession of offensive weapons by those who, frankly, have no legitimate reason to have them. The Minister will be aware, however, of some of my concerns, particularly about the unintended consequences this legislation might have for legitimate uses of some knives and firearms by responsible citizens, and I shall focus my remarks on those points.

Like the Minister, I represent a rural constituency in which many small businesses and tradesmen use knives to carry out their professions. Some of them have contacted me recently to express their concerns about the impact that these new restrictions, particularly on the online sale of some knives, might have on them.

In a rural constituency such as Ceredigion, it is often not practical, and certainly not always easy, for people to travel to a designated location to verify their identity, as opposed to receiving a delivery of tools at a home address, for example. This would pose specific difficulties for some smaller businesses as well.

It is important that, in combating knife crime, legislation targets specific blades and offenders, and that its impact on responsible users is mitigated as much as possible, be they woodsmen and farmers, Scout group leaders and outdoor educators, chefs or even those participating in historical re-enactments, all of whom have contacted me to express concerns. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister elaborated on how the Bill will mitigate the impact of these changes on responsible users, to provide reassurance that it will target the unjustifiable use of offensive blades, but still allow others to be used responsibly for justifiable work or leisure-related purposes.

I also want to echo some of the arguments made about the need to take a proportionate approach to changes to firearms regulations. It is appropriate that those who hold firearms certificates are rigorously assessed by the police and subjected to medical assessments, background checks and continuous monitoring. Firearms of any calibre and description are dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands. Concerns have already been expressed—I will not go into them again in too much detail—that some of the proposed changes, including those to muzzle velocity regulations, will unfairly impact legitimate law-abiding firearms holders such as target shooters without achieving greater public safety or reducing gun crime. Will the Minister reconsider those concerns in Committee and provide greater detail on the justification for those changes?

[Alex Chalk]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has, like me, received representations from legitimate sportspeople saying that they would be open to considering further proposals such as additional storage security measures to allay any lingering concerns that may remain.

[Ben Lake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have indeed received many representations from responsible sportsmen, and from target shooters in particular, who are very open to looking again at the conditions connected to the licensing arrangements, particularly with regard to the storage of firearms. It would be both proportionate and reasonable to pursue the matter further in Committee.