Offensive Weapons Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

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

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I want to explain briefly why I was so keen to intervene on my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) briefly popped into the Chamber. I am a fan and enthusiastic supporter of her manifesto for strengthening families and I wanted to acknowledge her presence while she was here, but you very wisely stopped me doing so, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The idea of banning stuff does not come naturally to me. I have the tendencies of a classical liberal inasmuch as I believe that the freedom of the individual is considerably more important. However, I agree wholeheartedly with two thirds of the banning provisions in the Bill. Why would I not? In fact, we might ask ourselves why we are having to ban these things. Why have they not been banned already?

Some Members will be much more conversant than I am with some of the terms used in the Bill, but I had to google the term “zombie knife” to understand what one is. The classic definition is that a zombie knife has a straight and a serrated cutting edge but also includes markings or wording that suggests the knife will be used for violent ends. The idea that we might sell such things, the idea that someone thought it a good idea to design such an overtly violent piece of equipment and then sell it, strikes me as a bit crazy in the first place, so we are unfortunate to be in this position.

My excellent local newspaper, the Express & Star, is, as has been mentioned previously, campaigning to ensure that other knives are considered for inclusion in future legislation. When we walk down the high street and see the range of what can only be described as weapons that are freely available, we need to ask ourselves what other purpose they could possibly have than to be used for acts of violence or intimidation.

Banning such knives is clearly a good idea, because they are obviously offensive weapons, but I am not naturally given to the idea of banning things. I recently read this in the paper—I do not know whether it is true, but I just could not make it up—but did Jamie Oliver really meet Nicola Sturgeon to consider the banning of two-for-one pizzas? I do not know, but that is what I read. A guy who has allegedly made £240 million from selling food now wants to dictate what the less well-off can eat. A good middle-class family could go to one of Jamie’s restaurants and get a good deal on pizza, but he does not want the same opportunity for low-cost food to be extended to less well-off people. Counter-intuitive? Bonkers? Others can decide.

Instead of tackling the problem of children eating too much high-salt, high-energy food, how about endorsing the idea of a mile a day? All children should be encouraged to walk or run a mile a day, in the hope that the practice persists when they become adults. As someone who has spent six hours sat in the Chamber today, I would appreciate getting out to do my mile. I look forward to some exercise after this debate.

The idea that people might carry acid in public, in small amounts, for purposes other than to do harm to others is clearly also counter-intuitive, and it is something that we should ban.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my very good and hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. I do not understand how anyone can be allowed to buy acid except for scientific purposes; I just do not understand how that can happen in our society. What purpose would it serve other than to do bad?

[Eddie Hughes]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. When people from the outside world look into this Chamber, they will question why some of these things are not already against the law. I am a member of the Women and Equalities Committee, and in this Chamber we recently debated upskirting, which is another example of something about which the general public would surely think, “Are you crazy? Surely this should be against the law already.”

My hon. Friend makes a valid point, but perhaps we are asking and addressing the wrong question. By the time a young gang member, typically aged between 14 and 24, picks up a knife to carry out an assault, we have already failed them. A number of Government programmes are upstreaming the work to try to prevent people from getting to that point in the first place. For example, £920 million has been invested in the troubled families programme, which started in 2011. A subsequent round of funding was agreed for 2015 to 2020, with the aim of reaching 400,000 families. It has had some mixed reviews of its effect, but the idea is that there are a certain number of families in communities—everybody knows who they are—who require intensive support from several agencies, both governmental and voluntary, and they need to be where we maximise our focus and effort because, as I said, once someone is in a gang something has already gone wrong.

Before I came to the House, I worked for the YMCA in Birmingham, a charity that supports young, previously homeless people. It has 300 accommodation units, but it does not just provide accommodation; it helps vulnerable people who need a wide range of support. These are people who are not used to accessing medical and health services in the way the rest of us would; they need to be got up in the morning and shown the way to the dentist and to the doctor so that they can attend appointments. It is clear that fragile people who are offered support can be saved from a life of crime and gang culture. Often, those who engage in gang culture are reaching out for some validation—for somebody to say, “You’re welcome in our group, we will protect and support you, and you will be one of us.” That is surely the embodiment of what we consider family to be.

I completely endorse some elements of the Bill, but I am still confused about the measures on firearms. Members spoke eloquently earlier and from an informed position, asking, “Why are we trying to ban something that has super-limited previous exposure to crime and that is, generally speaking, held by people who have already gone through all sorts of security checks and is held in the most secure way?” Those provisions possibly feel like a step too far, so I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State say he would further consider that element of the Bill.

As a Government, we are doing the right thing by offering a broad range of support to the most vulnerable young people in society, because the upstreaming of support is incredibly important, and we should indeed be banning these weapons.

Finally, I have had a long-running disagreement with the West Midlands police and crime commissioner. He is moving police officers from Bloxwich in my constituency to Wolverhampton, thereby reducing response times and moving those officers away from the community that they serve. That is not a good move. The Government have provided him with extra resource by allowing him to increase the precept to put more police on the street, but he has patently failed to do so, because he believes that that money is better spent on office staff. That is completely wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Prior to the debate, we were furnished with a huge number of statistics, and those statistics make stark and appalling reading, because behind every one of them is a real life that has been lost, a family that has been destroyed or a person left with life-changing disfigurement and injury. In 2017—a particularly bad year—we saw a 22% increase in offences involving knives, an 11% increase in firearms offences and a near tripling of recorded corrosive substance attacks. Within a few miles of where we sit, in the city of London, we have seen more than 70 murders just this year.

I am pleased that a good proportion of the Bill is devoted to putting on a statutory footing many of the voluntary commitments that retailers have given over the last couple of years, and I know that many local authorities have worked with local traders to implement codes of practice regarding knife and corrosive substance sales. I am also pleased that the Bill extends to internet business-to-consumer sales, which is long overdue.

Clauses 12 to 27 contain expansive measures to restrict and control the supply and ownership of bladed items. That has been mentioned at length this afternoon, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes). We need a complete prohibition of these things called zombie knives, which are particularly fearsome and have no value in what they look like. They are not like 18th-century samurai swords; they have one sole purpose. They have cutting, serrated edges and are deemed and bought to be threatening and offensive.

[Bob Stewart]

I am particularly concerned that on the internet, for under a tenner, one can buy a commando knife, which is the ultimate killing knife.

[Craig Mackinlay]

My hon. Friend is all too aware of the use of such weapons from his previous life. He makes a valid point—it is not just zombie knives. All manner of offensive and dangerous weapons are available out there.

The provisions related to bladed articles are proportionate, robust and to be welcomed. However, the great problem, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) spoke, is that in every single kitchen in every single house there are the tools available to cause havoc on our streets. No matter how we frame the Bill, it is very difficult to legislate against the domestic knives that exist absolutely everywhere and are too often the weapon responsible for murders on the streets of this country.

Also, we heard clearly from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) that we must be careful not to criminalise the legitimate sale of bespoke, expensive cutlery by mail order. That is a consideration.

The great difficulty, which I do not think this Bill fully addresses, is sale on the internet from foreign sources to domestic customers in this country. It is obviously impossible for a UK Bill to extend its remit extraterritorially, but I recommend that the Minister give serious thought, either this afternoon or in Committee, to including in the Bill a provision for responsibility to fall on the agent company that has facilitated the trade—whether a corporate body such as eBay or Amazon, or something else. These have become the primary facilitators of foreign business transactions and of selling to UK domestic consumers, and it is time they bore responsibility for what they are doing.

I understand the thinking behind the provisions in clauses 28 and 29, relating to high muzzle velocity rifles, but in my view this precautionary principle simply goes too far. As many right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned, there are no cases at all of high muzzle velocity or high-energy rifles being used in any criminal act. It is also beyond me how it was decided that 13,600 joules—or 10,000 foot-pounds in old money—should be the limit. Why not 13,500 joules or 10,000 joules, or anything else?

These are obviously powerful weapons, and they could be used as a sniper rifle, for instance, but they have never been used as such. They are large, heavy and unwieldy, and they have never been used for such purposes. For those who want to own such weapons, the reality is that it is very difficult to get hold of one. People are required to apply for a firearms certificate, which means an interview by the local police force, a Disclosure and Barring Service check and security measures in their house to ensure that any such weapon is securely stored, while increasingly—this applies across many police forces—their vetting will need to be confirmed by a GP.

Given the numbers involved, these provisions are ill thought out. As the Minister will be aware, the handgun—banned since 1997, but all too easily obtained and illegally held—is the criminal’s weapon of choice. This weapon is the killer on the street. Banning high-power rifles, on the basis of what I consider an overweening precautionary principle, would be as daft as banning vans or lorries, which in some circumstances can be, and have been, used as offensive and lethal weapons.

I support the thrust of the Bill—I absolutely support the measures against bladed weapons and chemicals—but I ask for some sensible thinking about single-shot high-energy rifles. I really beg the Minister to look again at internet facilitators, because it is time that they took responsibility for connecting businesses abroad with consumers at home and that they were held accountable for what they are doing in the consumer market.