Scotland Bill

Cathy Jamieson Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I welcome you to the Committee, Ms Primarolo. I know how much you appreciate the convivial nature of Scottish debates, and I hope that we will do our best to behave ourselves today and to conduct these proceedings in a civil manner.

On Second Reading, we made it clear that it was our intention to improve and strengthen the Bill. I concede that, over the past few weeks, significant progress has been made in that direction. We have already had the report from the Scottish Parliament’s Bill Committee, which made a number of useful and helpful recommendations, especially those that apply to the non-fiscal parts of the Bill. I welcome those recommendations. It is perhaps unfortunate, however, that some of them cannot be properly debated because of where we are in the process. The Scottish Parliament has not even passed its legislative consent motion, yet we are here in Committee today discussing the Scotland Bill, line by line and clause by clause.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

Notwithstanding all that, and the fact that there is a huge amount of discussion still to be had, will the hon. Gentleman address the amendment? Does he not agree that it is absolutely right that the count in all Scottish parliamentary elections should take place immediately, overnight?

[Pete Wishart]

I have no dispute whatever with the hon. Lady about that; of course the count should take place as soon as possible—[Interruption.] If she will allow me, I must point out that we are debating clause 1. She needs to check what we are discussing just now.

We have made progress, but it is unfortunate that we are unable to debate certain amendments that could have been tabled on the back of what was proposed by the parliamentary Bill Committee in the Scottish Parliament. We are at a different stage in the process. The legislative consent motion has not been passed, yet we are here today scrutinising the Bill in detail in Committee without having access to that important work.

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[David Mundell]

The Government are looking forward to the debate in the Scottish Parliament later this week when it will consider the legislative consent motion coming forward from the Bill Committee. It will be very interesting to see how the SNP votes in that debate.

Clause 1 transfers to Scottish Ministers certain Executive functions relating to the administration of Scottish Parliament elections that are currently the responsibility of the Secretary of State. Members will wish to note that the Bill Committee in the Scottish Parliament accepted this provision in its report on the Bill. However, as has been mentioned, the report also asked for consideration of a number of related issues such as the procedure for filling any regional seat vacancy during the life of a Parliament, the rules relating to disqualification, and reciprocal consultation. I wish to reaffirm that the written statement from the Secretary of State makes clear our commitment carefully to consider those recommendations, including those relating to this clause. The Scottish Parliament will vote on the Bill on Thursday, and we await the outcome of that vote.

The clause will enable Scottish Ministers to make general provision by order for the conduct and administration of elections to Holyrood, subject only to some necessary constraints. This power includes making provision about supply or otherwise dealing with the electoral register, the combination of Scottish Parliament elections with other elections falling within the legislative competence of the Parliament, and limitation of candidates’ election expenses. However, some elements of the powers will remain the function of the Secretary of State—that is, the franchise and the power to combine Scottish Parliament elections with other reserved elections. That will ensure that issues of constitutional importance continue to be dealt with by the UK Parliament. The Scotland Bill Committee in the Scottish Parliament recognised and accepted the continued reservation of those matters.

Amendment 10, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West said, would require Scottish Ministers’ first conduct order under the new powers to include provision requiring returning officers to start the count at Scottish Parliament elections within four hours of the close of the poll, or to publish a statement explaining why they were unable to do so. It is important to clarify at this point that the amendment would not apply to the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections.

I recognise the strength of feeling on this issue, which has been set out eloquently by the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). The drama and excitement of election night and the wish to know the election result as soon as possible are vital parts of our political heritage. I want returning officers to listen to what has been said in this debate. As hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies know, Mary Pitcaithly, the chairman of the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, will be available to Scottish MPs to discuss the arrangements for the forthcoming Scottish elections at a meeting at the Scotland Office later this week. I am sure that the point about overnight counts will again be forcefully made.

In a recent response to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, I suggested that he and his colleagues should lobby for overnight counts. I had noticed that the counts in Conservative-led council areas such as Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Borders and South Ayrshire were scheduled to be overnight counts, and that Labour predominated in the council areas that were on the list of counts scheduled to happen the following day. I therefore thought that he might be able to bring more influence to bear than I in those areas.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but does he not agree that the best way to ensure that overnight counts take place is to pass the amendment and put it in the Bill, rather than simply exhorting to people and leaving the discretion to them?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Lady cannot have heard me say that the amendment would not apply to the 2011 election. I am surprised that she, of all people, takes the view that when we are devolving powers to the Scottish Parliament on this matter, we should curtail them. Once the powers have been devolved, it will be perfectly possible for the Scottish Parliament to take account of the representations that have been made from certain quarters, where there is clearly an equally strong feeling about overnight counts. Passing this amendment would be contrary to the spirit of devolving responsibility for these matters to the Scottish Parliament. I certainly hope that we will not see support from the Scottish National party for such curtailment of a newly devolved power.

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[David Mundell]

The hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) tempts me to answer that it is a secret, but it is not. Rather, it is part of the full legislative scrutiny of the Bill. As I suggested earlier, and as the Secretary of State’s written ministerial statement suggested, we take the issues raised by the Committee, and the specific issues raised in relation to the clause, very seriously.

[Cathy Jamieson]

It might be helpful for those who are not au fait with all the technicalities if the Minister confirms that these specific clauses are not dealt with in the legislative consent motion that will be debated in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday, and that a further LCM will be required.

[David Mundell]

That is a helpful intervention, because the LCM that will come before the Scottish Parliament this week relates to the Bill as published, and as scrutinised by that Parliament’s Committee—and also by this House. The LCM the Committee promotes suggests that if there are significant changes to the Bill—and, of course, the proposed amendments to section 57(2) of the 1998 Act would be significant—there would be another legislative consent process with the Scottish Parliament. The Government are clear in that regard. Also, as I understand it, the Scottish Government do not support the LCM promoted by the Committee.

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[Pete Wishart]

I am about to come to that. Let me explain first what we are trying to achieve with the amendment, and I will then deal with the hon. Gentleman’s wider point. He may intervene again if he feels that he is not getting a satisfactory response.

Our amendment deletes a small section that states that power over the control of “specially dangerous” weapons remains with the Secretary of State. It ensures that the Scottish Parliament will have the power to legislate for all air weapons, including the “specially dangerous” weapons that require a firearms certificate. The Bill as it stands includes a power for the Secretary of State to designate “specially dangerous” air weapons, which would then fall under the reserved regime that applies to all other firearms. In that case, the power would lie with the UK Government and Ministers and would not be subject to any approval from Scottish Ministers or the Scottish Parliament.

We therefore propose that the relevant power be exercised with the consent of the Scottish Parliament, even if it is not transferred. We believe that this is important because there are different and distinct issues relating to firearms in Scotland. I do not want to mention specifically all the tragedies that have taken place. We have only to recall Dunblane several years ago to recognise the very real issues that we have in Scotland involving firearms. It would be much more sensible for all firearms to be under one control in one central point. Scottish police forces have taken great interest in our plea and they would be interested in developing and exercising it.

We want to avoid complication. Our amendment would devolve legislative competence for all air weapons to the Scottish Parliament. I intend to press the amendment to a Division because it is important. This is one of the few opportunities that we will get to improve the Bill significantly and ensure that all weapons are included in it. It is a small measure designed to improve the Bill, as we said we would, and I urge the entire Committee to support it.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution to this part of the debate. I hope it will be one based on the experience of representing an area that has had its fair share of difficulties with airguns, and of four years as the Justice Minister in Scotland, including at the time of the incident that has been referred to when a toddler lost his life in the east end of Glasgow as a result of an air weapon. Far from responding to any media frenzy, I hope that I was able as a politician to respond to the real tragedy for people in the local community, not least the child’s parents, who witnessed the event and had to deal with the consequences.

At that point, when there were demands for an immediate, all-out ban on air weapons, I took the view that we should take a considered approach that looked at the evidence and brought together the police and other organisations. At that stage I met a number of those organisations. I believed that it was best to deal with the situation not through a piecemeal approach, but by working with the UK Government to secure changes on sentencing and tightening the legislation, which we did, and with a view to looking at how a licensing regime could operate in Scotland in future. I welcome the clause that will give the Scottish Parliament the opportunity to do something about this.

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[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Lady share my experience that the abuse of air weapons often involves not only the cases that make the newspapers, but the distressing circumstances of much-loved family pets being injured or killed when shot at? Those stories never make the headlines, but they nevertheless cause great distress in communities.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I absolutely agree. Of course, those are the types of incidents that local newspapers report far more regularly than national newspapers.

Information about the incident in Auchinleck quickly got into the public domain, some of which was not absolutely accurate. A number of school pupils were injured, albeit by what the hon. Member for The Cotswolds described as a toy BB gun—I have more to say on that in a moment—and required hospital treatment, so I hope that he is not suggesting that it is not necessary to have a serious look at how that gun got into the hands of the people who used it, what they were doing with it and why they became involved in such an incident. To be honest, I recognise where he is coming from in relation to his sporting and shooting interests, but I find it difficult to understand in any event why anyone living in an urban environment would require an air weapon in their home. It is time we looked at the issue, and I hope that that is something a licensing or other regime in Scotland could deal with.

I want to say something about firearms in general. I accept many of the points made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but I do not believe that at this stage we require responsibility for the whole range of firearms legislation to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. However, I do think that it is incumbent on the UK Government—perhaps the Minister will indicate what discussions he will have or has had with Home Office colleagues—to ensure that the provisions of the 1968 Act still stand the test of time. The worst possible thing that could happen is that we devolve something and discover subsequently that we will have to revisit it, for example if the definition of what constitutes an airgun is no longer seen to meet the needs of the legislation we are devolving.

I want to say something on BB guns, because I know that in many instances they are the weapons—I use the word “weapons” rather than “toys” because of the damage they can inflict—that cause exactly the problems that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) identified. I also believe that there is a gap in the legislation, because those weapons appear to be easily available, particularly to children and young people. The fact that they are not covered by legislation sends entirely the wrong message. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister will have discussions with his Home Office colleagues to take that forward.

I appreciate that other Members want to comment in the debate and so do not intend to speak for much longer. I feel that the time is right, and I have given the matter careful consideration because my initial response when Justice Minister, as I have said, was that we should not legislate or press for legislation in haste. It is four years since that time, and considerably longer since the incident in Easterhouse, so no one could accuse us of legislating in haste when we take these measures forward.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The hon. Lady is making a cogent and reasonable case, and I am interested to hear what she has to say as a former Justice Minister. In the Andrew Morton case, as I said in my contribution, Mark Bonini was sentenced to life imprisonment, so what does she think it is about the current laws that is not working and needs to be modified?

[Cathy Jamieson]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I say to him gently that the people of Easterhouse, and perhaps people more widely in Scotland, feel that legislation that would prevent someone like that from having an air weapon in their home in the middle of Easterhouse would be of assistance. That is why there is strong support in Scotland for a ban on air weapons. That is not the province of any particularly political party, but something that has united people across political organisations and local communities.

I said that it is not about legislating in haste. I believe that the time has come to look at how we can ensure that no other family goes through the same trauma as did the family in Easterhouse, but we will do that by having workable legislation. I end on a note of caution, because there are a number of areas where I think a great deal of further work needs to be done to ensure, for example, that the cross-border issues are manageable. We need to look at that in detail. It is entirely possible to look at exemptions for sporting activity, and I know from my previous experience in the Scottish Parliament that fruitful discussions were held, and I am sure continue to be held, on the transport and use of guns for sporting activities. This should not be the end of the matter. If the proposal is included and the Bill passed, it will be a stepping stone on a journey to ensure that, wherever possible, we avoid such incidents as have been described and are able to look at how best the existing firearms legislation throughout, importantly, the United Kingdom can be strengthened. In particular, I make the plea, which I shall repeat when the review reports, for the careful consideration of including in legislation BB guns and weapons like that to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands.

[Mrs McGuire]

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson). For those colleagues who are not aware of her work as a Justice Minister, I hope that they will see what she managed to do when she held that difficult position and airguns became a major issue in Scotland. I acknowledge what she did.

I fear that the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for whom many in the House have great respect, has taken a big hit tonight, because in prosecuting his case he fails to understand that the issue of air weapons is slightly different in Scotland. That is why we feel it important to allow the Scottish Parliament to regulate air weapons in Scotland. I, like the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), have a large rural constituency, and I have had no correspondence—letters or e-mails— at all on the issue, yet many in my constituency see air weapons as part of an introduction to country sports, and I fully recognise that.

I fear also that the hon. Member for The Cotswolds anticipates what a Scottish Parliament might do with such powers, but he has to recognise that it has Members with urban constituencies and many with rural constituencies, and they will take into account the balances that have to be struck to ensure that they do not undermine a way of life or an activity that is important to many communities in Scotland.

When the legislation banning handguns was passed in 1997, one argument was that it would undermine sporting activity. That has not happened, because in that legislation we ensured that there was a tight regime and that any sporting activity was conducted in a safe context. That is what we are asking for in the Bill before us, because the debate has thrown up some issues that could cause confusion if they are not attended to properly.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun that we need to be clear about what we are doing in passing this element of the Bill. Indeed, on Second Reading, I asked the Minister whether he had consulted his colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that we had the definitions right and did not allow some air weapons to fall outside the legislation. I should still be interested to know what discussions he or his departmental colleagues have had with the Home Office to ensure that we get the definitions right.

I fully support the probing amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) has tabled, because the issue is not just about passing this element of the Bill, but about instilling in the House the confidence that, in passing the legislation, we have in place all the other elements that are required to make it an effective piece of devolution, while maintaining safety both north and south of the border and not allowing for any confusion, which might exist if we do not get the legislation right for those people who, as the Minister will know, cross the border regularly. I hope that he will deal with the specific issues that have been raised. This is an issue not of principle, but of detail, and I hope that he will be able to give us some assurances this evening.

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[David Mundell]

I certainly would not want the Committee to be misled by anything that I said. I referred to the paragraphs in the Scotland Bill Committee report, where it is clear that the Committee formed the view that it did. It is also clear that the Scottish Government have come forward with an LCM that supports this clause as it stands.

Clause 11 devolves a power to the Scottish Parliament in relation to the regulation of air weapons. This would enable the Scottish Parliament to legislate, if it wished, to create a separate regulatory regime for air weapons in Scotland. Members will wish to note that, as I said, the Bill Committee in the Scottish Parliament accepted the provision, and we wait to see the outcome of the debate on its LCM and the LCM proposed by the Scottish Government.

After careful consideration, the Calman commission concluded that firearms law should not be devolved in full. It is generally acknowledged that the UK already has some of the toughest firearm controls in the world and that the current unified regime represents the best way of tackling the problems that exist in relation to armed crime. The commission did recommend devolving power over a specific category—air weapons. The Government agree with this recommendation. Air weapons are the type of guns most often involved in firearms offences, and given the nature of their misuse most frequently to cause criminal damage, as we have heard, they are best controlled at the level closest to those affected. Reference was made to the specifics of the recent incident in Auchinleck, which demonstrated and reaffirmed the continuing concern in Scotland about the use of air weapons.

[Cathy Jamieson]

Given the Minister’s comments, will he make it clear for the record that if the clause goes through and the Bill is passed, a future Scottish Parliament could, if it wished, ban air weapons completely?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Lady makes an important point that also relates to the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). In fact, passing the clause will not in itself ban air weapons of the category defined in Scotland. That is a point that I want to make to my hon. Friend.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I appreciate that, but the point I was trying to get at, although perhaps I did not make myself clear enough, was whether, if the Bill is passed, the Scottish Parliament could enact a complete ban on air weapons if it chose to do so.

[David Mundell]

The Scottish Parliament will be able to enact a complete ban on air weapons that fall within the definition. The important point for colleagues such as my hon. Friend is that those who do not agree with that course of action will be able to argue their case in the Scottish Parliament. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) set out a strong case on the basis of her considerable experience, respected views and strong beliefs. I felt that my hon. Friend also set out a strong view, although Opposition Members and indeed Members of my party in the Scottish Parliament might not subscribe to it. It is important that people who hold such views move the argument on to the Scottish Parliament if the clause is agreed to, because that is the appropriate place for the debate to take place.

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[David Mundell]

I will come on to that later in my remarks. We are satisfied that the definition, as set out in this legislation, is appropriate to deal with the issues raised by the Calman commission.

[Cathy Jamieson]

Given my concern about BB guns, will the Minister answer the question that I posed about whether he has had any discussions with the Home Office on that matter? Is there a way to ensure that the Scottish Parliament can deal with that problem?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Lady has just under three weeks to raise that issue in the Scottish Parliament in her capacity as a Member of that Parliament. On a UK basis, I am happy to undertake to raise with the Home Secretary the concerns that she has set out this evening.