Offensive Weapons Bill

Earl of Cork and Orrery Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Cork and Orrery (CB)]

I object to some parts of the amendment. There are two or three areas where there is insufficient attention to detail for it to supersede the original Bill. For a start, there is a question about MARS and lever action which, as has just been raised, is used by target shooters in international competition. This is an important aspect of Paralympic competition and normal shooting competitions, so we do not want to catch those weapons in the amendment. Another item left out from the amendment, I suspect by mistake, relates to a prohibition on the use of .22 rimfire semi-automatic rifles, which are widely used for vermin control and the like. That certainly should be in the amendment. Another point is that although the amendment refers to,

“a calibre greater than .45 inches”,

there are quite large numbers of rifles out there—

[The Earl of Shrewsbury]

My Lords, I do not think that .22 calibres are caught. I think the noble Earl is incorrect there.

[The Earl of Cork and Orrery]

As I read it, the amendment does not refer to the .22 calibre whereas a similar paragraph in the Bill does.

[The Earl of Shrewsbury]

My Lords, I think that may be a typographic error. It should refer to the .22.

[The Earl of Cork and Orrery]

Typographic error or no, it is not in there. Going back to large-calibre rifles, quite a lot of people get much fun out of remarkable things such as black-powder, muzzle-loader and Snider .577 rifles, which are far larger but have very low effects. Again, more detail is required to ensure that these sort of things can be legally held.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 80A to 80D in this group. If the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, had not tabled his Amendment 79 concerning .50 calibre rifles, he would have been best described as asleep at the wheel. I think the Committee will be grateful for the opportunity to discuss this matter and, hopefully, identify a solution. Other noble Lords have discussed the genesis of this matter. A .50 calibre rifle is clearly in a class of its own. However, I have some concerns about the quality of briefings given to Ministers and to Members of the House of Commons. It is therefore not surprising that the Government had to drop their provisions on .50 calibre rifles in the House of Commons.

While .50 calibre target rifles have some extraordinary characteristics, they are entirely dependent on the skill of the user. It is tempting to believe that all one has to do to hit the V-bull centre of the target is to line up the cross-hairs of a telescopic sight and squeeze the trigger. The reality is rather more complex. It is a great sport simply because it is so difficult, and therefore not surprising that target shooting is an Olympic sport. First, the rifle has to be held correctly and in exactly the same way for every shot. The shooter’s breathing has to be controlled perfectly. If I was trying to shoot at 1,000 yards I doubt that I could keep the cross-hairs on the target, let alone the bull. Trigger action is also all-important. For instance, snatching the trigger is the cause of a lot of inaccuracy. Frankly, due to the recoil, if I tried to fire a .50 calibre target rifle I would be terrified—a 7.62 target rifle is bad enough. For all these reasons, an applicant for a firearms certificate for a .50 calibre target rifle will not be successful unless considerable skill can be demonstrated with lighter but full-bore target rifles.

It is of course exceptionally unlikely that a terrorist would have the necessary skill to use a .50 calibre rifle in the way feared by some. My noble friend Lord Lucas said that these rifles had never been used in crime.

I do not have a philosophical objection to private ownership of a .50 calibre target rifle. However, two mischiefs remain. The first is that if one was stolen it could for a while give rise to major security concerns. This might result in certain events being cancelled. The second is this. I do not have the skill to use a .50 calibre rifle effectively. However, I have the skill to incorporate one into a remote-controlled weapon system and it would have none of the marksmanship weaknesses that I have. The good news is that it is very unusual for someone with this level of engineering skill to use it for such evil and illegal purposes. It is even less likely in the case of today’s radicalised terrorists, who usually have very limited skills.

In the UK, we suffer mercifully few disasters with legally held firearms. This is because we get the balance right. Ministers generally make the right decisions, taking into account advice from Home Office officials. There is one particular official who has done sterling work over many years and has briefed or worked with many of us in this Committee. I am sure that noble Lords know who I am talking about and we should be grateful for his efforts.

My Amendment 80A would build on my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 74 and provide that special storage and transport conditions on a firearms certificate were mandatory in the case of a high muzzle energy rifle; that is, one with more than 13,600 joules of energy.

My Amendment 80B would give the Secretary of State an order-making power to specify the special storage and transport conditions to be included on the certificate. Of course, we could go for guidance rather than an order. I have made no provision for parliamentary scrutiny because I do not believe it to be sensible to make the security details public.

So far as I can see, the current standard gun cabinets are designed to prevent unauthorised access or opportunistic theft and they appear to do so. However, they are not designed to resist a determined attack using specialist equipment. My noble friend Lord Lucas proposes a much higher level of security and I support this. While my noble friend’s amendment is clear on what is proposed, I think that there are drafting issues and I suspect that the same applies to my amendment.

I understand that some owners of .50 calibre target rifles already have the requisite secure facilities. However, some might not be so lucky and there is also a vulnerability when these guns are in transit. Currently, it is illegal to possess any of the key components of a firearm without a certificate and this includes the bolt. My Amendment 80C would allow another person to be in possession of a bolt if this was in connection with a special storage and transport condition. I would expect there to be documentary conditions involved. This provision could be useful in allowing club officials to hold the bolts for the owners of a .50 calibre rifle. It could also allow the rifle to be transported without the bolt being present with the rifle. Therefore, if a rifle is stolen but the bolt can still be accounted for, there is no security problem and no risk.

I have made no special provision about the ammunition because I do not believe that it is necessary or beneficial. This is because dealing with the rifle solves the problem and it is not particularly difficult to acquire or reload a few rounds of .50 calibre ammunition for some terrible purpose.

I am not fixed on whether we solve this problem by storage conditions or by disassembling the rifle, thus rendering it harmless except when in use on a range, or a combination of the two. It may be best to have a range of options available to suit the circumstances, and this could be provided for in the proposed order or guidance. If we want to have a disassembly option available, we need my Amendment 80C, or something similar on the face of the Bill.

If the sense of the Grand Committee is that something along the lines of my suggestion is acceptable, the Minister may be more tempted to take the opportunity to come up with a properly drafted government amendment. The consultation could then go forward as planned and, with benefit of the consultation, the Government could implement the necessary changes by whatever means is provided in the Bill.

My final amendment in this group is Amendment 80D. The Firearms Act 1968 does not define a rifle, other than to say that the term includes a carbine. This is because there was no need. I was concerned that the prohibition of high muzzle energy rifles might catch preserved artillery and tank guns, which are currently licensed by an ordinary firearms certificate if they have not already been deactivated. I have been assured by officials that the term “rifle” would exclude artillery pieces, and this makes sense. However, if we do make the changes regarding HME rifles, an individual police officer might want to make a name for himself by claiming that an artillery piece is caught by any legislation we eventually pass. He could claim that the term “rifle” means a firearm that has been rifled. Indeed, one noble and gallant Lord has asked me to look at and raise this point. I have previously been involved with a problem arising in this way, concerning the Vehicle Excise Act, concrete pumping machines and mobile cranes— don’t ask.

It would be best to define a rifle in the 1968 Act, but I would be happy if the Minister gave a categorical “Pepper v Hart” assurance that the term “rifle” does not include larger pieces of ordnance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a brief intervention in this debate. I declare an interest as a holder of a firearms certificate and the owner of a number of rifles, none of which would come anywhere near the type of muzzle energy we are talking about.

I support the description of our firearms licensing regime given by my noble friend Lord Lucas. It is generally accepted internationally that the UK has one of the most rigorous and best informed firearms licensing regimes in the world. It is also generally accepted that the shooting community respects and understands that the holding of a firearms certificate is a privilege that can be removed. Because of that, they are a very law-abiding section of the community. They are acutely aware that their sport and activity can be curtailed should they be involved in criminal activity entirely unrelated to the use of their firearms.

With that in mind, we have to be a bit careful of banning things because they are an easy target—forgive the pun. It is easy to work out where a particular category of firearm is and remove it from circulation. I hold no particular candle for the .50 calibre rifle and I am open to arguments about where the line should be drawn, because one indeed has to be drawn somewhere. We have acted in the past regarding handguns, fully automatic weapons and a number of other eventualities, but I very much support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s contention that before we ban something we have to have a closely argued, coherent case that is evidence based. Just banning something because we feel like it or because it is easy to do should not be a proper course of action.

Debate on the Bill has, on the one hand, largely been about very large numbers of people carrying knives, often using them and being closely tied up with the criminal fraternity, particularly drug dealers. On the other hand, the Bill talks about banning the use of a piece of equipment that is legally held when no recorded crime has ever been committed using a legally held rifle of such high-muzzle energy, as far as I understand it. I am open to correction by my noble friend and other Members of the Committee. We have to be very careful about that. Where do we draw the line?

I quite accept what the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said: these are weapons of very high power and very high destructive capability. That is absolutely correct. On the other hand, their utility for criminals is much lower than that of many other sniper rifles. He described them as sniper rifles, and indeed they are. But they are not the typical sniper rifles used by the British Army, which are in calibres much closer to sporting rifles and are much smaller pieces of equipment. We have to put this in perspective and look at the actual threat.

When the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to what was worrying the Home Secretary about these rifles, it occurred to me to question whether he was worried about the theft of these 130 or so rifles, a tiny number, or about one of those firearm certificate holders turning bad. Or was it really about someone purchasing one of these—in America, for example—and turning it into a small number of machinery components, putting them in a container and smuggling them in, as a vast number of illegally held pistols arrive in this country. The real danger faced on the streets is from illegally held weapons, not legally held weapons.

[The Earl of Cork and Orrery]

My Lords, I will add a couple of points. It is very instructive to look up “sniper rifles” on Google because you get a huge list of them, the vast majority at 7.62 calibre not .50 calibre. It is also interesting to see that three of the most popular .50 calibre rifles are made in this country and well known globally as some of the most popular sniper rifles. There are currently believed to be 200 large- calibre rifles in the UK, which is not a very substantial number. The cost of acquiring one of these .50 calibre target rifles is also not cheap—about £20,000 for the whole package, so there are never going to be very many of them.

Another point, which has already been made, is that only one of these rifles has ever been stolen in this country and it was found shortly afterwards, dumped by the opportunist thief, who realised that there was absolutely nothing he could do with it. They weigh about 36 pounds, which means they are not exactly the easiest things to carry around, and are very substantial in length—a length from here to the end of the desk. So we are talking about a rare beast indeed.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I hate guns, so I have no interest in promoting any cause. I do not want to trivialise firearms offences because they can be very serious, but they are relatively small in number compared with the number of knife crime offences, for example. Only 1% of non-air weapon firearms offences involve rifles. Bearing in mind the very low number of offences committed using rifles, can the Minister tell the Committee why the Government have set these hares running?