Fiona Mactaggart
Main Page: Fiona Mactaggart (Labour - Slough)Department Debates - View all Fiona Mactaggart's debates with the Home Office
Orlando Attack: UK Security Measures
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We must ensure—and this is part of the work that the Government are trying to do in the Home Office, in the Department for Education and elsewhere—that we send that clear message about the values that underpin our society here in the United Kingdom and make it such a great place to live, one of which is absolute respect for everyone, regardless of their sexuality, background, ethnicity, faith or none. It is important for us to ensure that those are the values that are being taught.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has, I think, expressed the views of us all. The unanimity of the House has been impressive, and I think we should communicate that to all the people who have lost loved ones in this atrocity.
It is true that the motivation for the outrage was hatred and terror, but what enabled it to happen was the availability of guns. More American citizens have been murdered in mass shootings than all the Americans who were killed in wars between the end of the civil war and the war in Iraq. Will the Home Secretary personally commit herself to conveying to the American Government our fear that if they continue not to act, they will lose more of their citizens to this hatred and terror?
Mrs May
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Gun availability is an important part of the overall issue. As I said earlier, we hear many voices in the United States—sadly—on both sides of the argument, because there are those who strongly claim that the right to carry arms should enable guns of this sort to be more freely available and ever present. I should be happy to raise the issue with the American Administration, because I think it important that we can see the dangers. We have suffered a tragedy here that led to the tightening of our gun laws, and I think we are all grateful for the fact that we now have the toughest, or some of the toughest, gun laws in the world.