Surrender of Offensive Weapons (Compensation) Regulations 2020

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister was quite strict that noble Lords should stick to arrangements for surrender and not ask any broader questions, so I will be very compliant and ask about that. I have seen several very successful schemes of this kind. A lot of them need a certain amount of good publicity, by which I mean not just good publicity but publicity that is well written and well phrased. So I have a few questions.

What form will the publicity take and how will the Government publicise it? Is the Minister confident that the message will actually reach the right people, because that is also part of it being successful? How will the Government ensure that the message is understood and believed, because you have to convince people to turn up at a police station with a weapon. To do that, they have to believe that they will be safe and that they will be believed.

There would seem to be an opportunity here to have a wider amnesty on offensive weapons, but I am not sure from what the Minister said whether that would be happening—other than for those weapons that are becoming newly illegal. The Government will be publicising a scheme to persuade people to do the right thing, so it would seem to be a good time to encourage them to hand in other weapons that are currently illegal at the same time. I hope that this is a very successful project.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The noble Lord, Lord Wei, has withdrawn, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley.