Firearms Control

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

The events earlier this year in which two gunmen took the lives of 13 other people using shotguns were deeply tragic. The public interest in the two cases and the questions asked about the efficacy of our gun laws are certainly understandable, and I therefore welcome this debate. I also welcome the publication of the Home Affairs Committee’s report, although I cannot say that I agree with all its recommendations.

Seneca the younger once said,

“quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est”

or

“a sword never kills anybody, it is merely a tool in the killer’s hand”.

Almost 2,000 years later, the satirical Welsh rap group Goldie Lookin’ Chain brought the message up to date with their 2004 hit “Guns don’t kill people, rappers do”—and Chris Moyles took it even further with, “Guns don’t kill people, rabbits do”. Please be assured that I do not highlight the lyric as a slur on the rapping community, but rather in support of the message of the song, which is that each holder of a gun is responsible for its mode of use.

In this country, by and large, we have not historically seen widespread gun ownership, or indeed gun crime. As is the case under the American constitution, we originally had the right to bear arms, but that right was overturned by the Firearms Act 1920. Unlike our American cousins, however, the public have shown little appetite for domestic gun ownership—long may that continue—other than for use as a countryside management tool or among interest groups who use firearms in their leisure and sporting time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) has already mentioned page 10 of the report and the disproportionate focus on those who legally hold firearms as opposed to those who hold them illegally. In paragraph 12, on page 58, the Committee refers to the fact that there is no evidence of

“an increase in misuse of lethal firearms”

since the last review of holding the licence renewal period at five years rather than two. I am not suggesting that there has been a knee-jerk reaction, but that shows that we need to continue to be measured. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Minister said that he would do that.

Firearm control has been considered repeatedly for more than 100 years. The Pistols Act 1903 regulated the sale of pistols and later Acts placed conditions on the ownership of firearms—such as the need to apply for a certificate to own a firearm or shotgun. The Firearms Act 1968 forms the basis for our gun laws and has been amended 34 times since then, creating the confusing and complex system to which the Committee referred.

Shotguns were used by both Moat and Bird, the perpetrators of the crimes that took place earlier this year, and the latter was licensed to own his. Incidentally, in an interview given to the BBC, one of Bird’s victims who survived the incident, himself a shotgun owner, described the current gun laws as “rigorous”, an opinion shared by the independent inquiry into the incident. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister also said:

“You can’t legislate to stop a switch flicking in someone’s head”.

Perhaps he, too, had been listening to Goldie Lookin’ Chain, but he was absolutely right. It appears—this seems to be the general consensus among those involved in the case—that no rule, regulation or more fierce application of the current processes would necessarily have prevented the tragedy.

It should be remembered that, although we share with many of our neighbours in Europe and the Commonwealth a comparatively low rate of gun homicide, we also have some of the most stringent gun laws in the world. A balance must be struck between legitimate use and safeguarding the public. I am not convinced that ever tighter regulation is likely to prevent each and every death caused by firearms, whether intentional or accidental, but it could prevent law-abiding, responsible citizens from using firearms in a legitimate, socially acceptable manner.

This morning the Home Affairs Committee released its report on firearms control. I agree with its conclusion that the legal construct of the various laws is rather complex and confusing. It recommends codification and simplification of the law, so that firearms owners and the police are clear about the circumstances of ownership and responsibilities. I welcome the proposals to try to simplify the law. I also welcome the potential inquiry into creating a single licensing system for section 1 firearms and shotguns.

In considering the role of GPs in the issuing of licences, I am not suggesting that simplification should be used as an excuse further to tighten already stringent regulation. The move to involve GPs in the process of awarding firearms certificates seems to be little more—dare I say it—than an exercise in bureaucracy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) has said, there is strong evidence to suggest that one cannot necessarily predict somebody’s future capacity in terms of owning a firearm.

Firearms are used in 6% of homicides, and known licensed firearms are used in 0.6% of homicides, so the move to include GPs is quite interesting. The idea of tagging medical records has already been described as potentially draconian, particularly in the light of fears about the security of NHS medical records. I join the Committee in dismissing calls for mandatory medical checks, because we cannot look into the future, and because of the guidance that has been given, which I thought was stronger than that. I thought that GPs were already obliged to notify the police of people in their practices who are potential threats to the community. As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) said, there was no suggestion that Mr Bird had recently seen his GP, and there were only six people in a year with whom such checks by a GP might have had an effect.

Let me turn now to employment in the sector. If we choose to go down the route of investigating a simplification of the law, it is imperative that any changes proposed have at their heart ring-fencing the rights of legitimate users, as those people play an important economic and social part in our communities. In September 2004, a report was undertaken on behalf of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the Country Land and Business Association and the Countryside Alliance in association with the Game Conservancy Trust, entitled “The Economic and Environmental Impact of Sporting Shooting”. It found that some 70,000 people are employed by the sport shooting industry, and in my area, the east of England, £140 million was brought into the economy through the sport. Indeed, seven constituents wrote to me about this matter and told me how they wanted to be able to continue shooting, seeing it as valuable as pest control and also as a sport that they enjoy.

Nationwide, shooting is worth a total of £1.6 billion. That does not take into account other forms of shooting such as shooting in gun clubs, which are also popular and serve a social as well as an economic purpose. Felixstowe rifle club, for example, was first formed in 1900. More than 100 years later, it is still going strong and has formed links with a number of local charities and local schools. It offers lessons to a number of local children as part of the Duke of Edinburgh award, and is one of only a few clubs in the country that caters for blind shooters, which is interesting.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that Suffolk has the lowest recorded level of gun crime in the United Kingdom. Does she agree that that is in spite of the fact that we have 97,000 licences for shotguns and firearms in the east of England, which suggests that the focus should be on dealing with unlicensed shotguns rather than licensed guns?

[Dr Coffey]

I could not agree more strongly with my hon. Friend and neighbour. That message is reinforced not only by my constituents who have contacted me but by patrons of my local, who are all regular shooters and wish not to be demonised for being so.

Felixstowe rifle club is one of many that had to adapt to the 1997 ban on handguns, which seems to have put an end to the sport of pistol shooting but done little to prevent the use of handguns in crime. Although legitimate handgun owners have given up their weapons, criminals show no sign of abating their use of them: in 1980 handguns were used in 529 robberies, and by 2008 the number had risen to 2,565 cases—down from a peak of 3,544 cases in 1992. In 2008 handguns were involved in 28 of the 39 firearms-related homicides that year—almost three quarters of all murders perpetrated using a gun. In contrast, only seven involved a shotgun and three a rifle. Rather than spending our time and energies picking off legitimate owners as easy targets—I include young people in that—we should be grappling with the more difficult, but much more important, question of how to tackle the criminal fraternity on the illegitimate use and manufacture of guns.

Young people have been mentioned, and although there is no connection with the recent incidents I take this opportunity to remind the House that 10 years ago the Government of the time said there should be no ban, and no minimum age for the issuing of licences, because supervised shooting is an important way of encouraging young people to use weapons appropriately.

The use of illegal handguns in our inner cities to commit crimes, including murder, has gone relatively unreported by the media, who seem happy to focus more on anomalous cases than on the real problem at hand. Some 55% of all firearm offences occur in just three police areas—the Metropolitan, Greater Manchester and West Midlands areas—and many involve handguns. Given that those weapons are already illegal, I reiterate that we should not legislate further to ensure tighter control of weapons but should ask ourselves, as has been mentioned in relation to air rifles, how we can better enforce current laws.

I hope that the planned introduction of a dedicated border police force will bring material results in reducing the smuggling of illegal weapons into England. I understand that there is a problem with the smuggling of illegal weapons, particularly from eastern Europe, but we also need to tackle the illegitimate use of guns already on our shores and the ability of criminals to manufacture guns by adapting decommissioned or other guns. This, in all likelihood, requires not the introduction of new laws or regulations but a range of measures and enforcement by the police.

With gun and knife amnesties our police forces have done good work in attempting to clear those weapons from our streets and take them out of the hands of youngsters who feel that they need to carry a knife to feel safe. Amnesties have taken place across the country and should continue; indeed, I call on people in my constituency and elsewhere who hold a gun in their house to ask themselves whether they still need it. However, it is equally important to look into the causes of gun crimes. What makes somebody pick up a gun or a knife before they leave the house, and what can we do to persuade them that they do not need to purchase an illegal weapon, let alone use it?

It seems to be an increasing feature of gang culture to use or brandish a firearm or to kill somebody with one as a way of going up the respect agenda. We need to cut that out of our culture, and I welcome some of the work that has been done on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), who talks from her own experience of holding a shotgun licence, and the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). Given that more than 700 people have died as a result of gunshot injuries and gun crime over the past 13 years, it is a great tragedy that we are having this debate only because it takes something such as the terrible events in Cumbria to bring this issue to the attention of the House. The work that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) has done with the Committee on this matter is greatly to his credit and is very valuable.

However, we need to highlight a few key issues and strands. First, the distinction has not always been made clearly in this debate between gun crimes perpetrated by people who were holding illegal weapons and those who hold legal weapons. Many of those 742 gun crime deaths were caused by people holding illegal weapons and not by people who have legal gun licences. I made the point in an intervention that Suffolk has the lowest rate of gun crime in the UK—we are very proud of that, notwithstanding those incidents involving air rifles in Lowestoft mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson)—yet 97,000 gun licences are held by those in the east of England, which is a very high level. That shows that there is not necessarily a causal effect between owning a gun licence and committing a gun crime. We know that gun crimes tend to happen in deprived urban areas, where those who commit crime do not hold gun licences. The key thing is to draw that distinction, because if we are to legislate on this issue, we must ensure that it is effective and addresses the key areas.

One thing we must do is to broaden out this debate. It is about firearms control, not just the terrible events in Cumbria, Hungerford or Dunblane. We need to ensure that the legislation and recommendations passed in this House will make things better. It is very difficult, because we have not heard any conclusive evidence this evening that changing the legislation to deal with licensed firearms will make any significant difference.

We know that there are issues with tackling the gun culture in our inner cities. In dealing with that culture, we need to stop the illegal trafficking of guns in this country and the police need to deal with that trade effectively, including on our borders. In some inner cities, however, dealing with education in schools, particularly in deprived areas, and the police working with communities to highlight the problems of gun crime would be a far more effective way of dealing with illegally committed acts and with communities where there are problems with gun crime. In many rural communities, however, people hold gun licences and are very law abiding. Earlier in the debate I talked about Suffolk, where people use guns for pest control. I do not shoot—I have no interest in shooting—but we must accept that the number of law-abiding citizens who do not commit crime and who do not have any interest in misusing their guns use their guns for sport and for pest control. We must accept that legislation must be effective and targeted on the causes of illegal gun crime in this country. It should not be focused on a knee-jerk reaction to one or two terrible events that results in banning guns for those who use them for legitimate, law-abiding sport or pest control reasons.

Based on my experience as a doctor, I want to pick up on the issue of medical practitioners. Would it necessarily be useful for medical practitioners to have to tick a box every year for the 97,000 people in the east of England who have gun licences? Is it important that those medical practitioners should be consulted annually? Far too often in my professional life, I saw the pointless forms we had to fill in. We ticked the boxes but it did not improve patient care or make things any safer. It is important that we do not stigmatise people with mental health conditions. People are perfectly competent and able to make informed choices. They are not necessarily going to be more likely to run off and commit a gun crime than someone who does not have a mental health condition. We need to be careful not to draw that stigma into the debate. To be perfectly frank, a piece of paper signed on one day of the year does not necessarily mean that in three, six or nine months that person will not have seen their mental state deteriorate considerably. Ticking a box does not mean that we will make things any safer, and the case has not been proven.

We know that when medical practitioners have a serious concern about the conduct of a patient—for example, a fear that a patient is a paedophile or the knowledge that a patient might be a danger to themselves or to the public—they take it into their own hands to breach medical confidentiality. There are many such cases. They breach medical confidentiality because the duty to society is greater than the duty of confidentiality. We have to trust them—we should not put an onerous burden on medical practitioners that will not necessarily be effective.

[Simon Hart]

If there was a situation in which my hon. Friend was required to make such observations and somehow failed to pick up on a patient’s mental health, which led to a dreadful tragedy, what would be the legal and professional implications for his trade?

[Dr Poulter]

There is always a blame culture, and we would have to be careful that a simple form that a doctor had to sign on one day of the year could not be used as a sledgehammer to hit that doctor or medical practitioner over the head later on because somebody perpetrated a bad act. As I have said, and as I think my hon. Friend accepted in making his point, someone’s mental state can deteriorate quickly—a switch can be flicked in someone’s mind and it is impossible to legislate for that. Simply involving a doctor in this process will not make that any less possible.

It is not only with gun crime that a switch can be flicked in that way, as we saw in north Wales with the Peter Moore case. In 1995, he killed four men with a knife in a random rampage. It is not just with gun crime that people temporarily lose control and go on a rampage—it happens with other weapons. In America there have been cases with samurai swords. We have to be careful not to legislate on the basis of one or two terrible tragedies, such as that in Cumbria. That is an important point for the House to consider.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am interested in this argument and I agree that a box-ticking exercise is no use, but GPs in rural communities will often be aware if patients are gun licence holders and might well pass on information if they are seriously concerned. The question is what to do in urban communities in which GPs might be unaware who is a gun licence holder. As my hon. Friend says, the problem is often the illicit gun holder who does not have a licence anyway.

[Dr Poulter]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Let us consider how effective that piece of paper—that box-ticking exercise—would be in an urban community. The turnover of patients in most GP practices in areas such as Camberwell, where I was a medical student, is a third of patients every year. Therefore, such a measure might not work because, with such a high turnover, it is not easy to keep track of patients who move and migrate around London and fall in and out of registers. As my right hon. Friend said, the people we are dealing with in urban areas are not those with licences but those who possess handguns illegally. Community engagement and education in schools is so important in addressing those issues.

We have had a very good debate and I will not talk for much longer. Members need to ask whether further legislation that would give doctors more onerous responsibilities to fill out forms, and that would make it more difficult for people to have gun licences, would make anybody safer. I think the answer is conclusively no. We cannot legislate for terrible tragedies such as that in Cumbria. Unfortunately, they will happen no matter what we do. It is easy, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East said, for us and the media to get the retrospectoscope out and judge things retrospectively in the hysteria of political debate. We need to legislate for the reality, which is that law-abiding gun owners who have a licence do not tend to misuse them. For the reasons I have given, I do not think that there is a conclusive case for strengthening the legislation.