Pig Farming

Debate between Dan Poulter and Simon Hart

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dr Poulter]

I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification, which makes the point even more forcefully. As he says, only 30% of imported pork in our supermarkets meets UK standards, according to BPEX. We need action from the Government to put the onus on supermarkets to show greater corporate responsibility and to provide a more level playing field for British food producers and the goods they sell.

[Simon Hart]

The Minister might be able to comment on the appropriateness and legality of using the planning system to impose such conditions on supermarkets.

[Dr Poulter]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I look forward to the Minister covering that that in his concluding remarks.

Firearms Control

Debate between Dan Poulter and Simon Hart

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.