Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the vulnerabilities of some female offenders. We are very much committed to delivering the female offender strategy by reducing the number of women in custody and seeing a greater proportion of women managed in the community. We are investing £9.5 million in women’s community sector organisations, and the North Wales Women’s Centre received nearly £50,000 of that investment last year. I commend him and the women’s centre for doing such important work in his constituency.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The Justice Secretary will have heard the exchange with the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers). He should be aware that there is a cohort of IRA murderers who have evaded justice, successfully fought extradition and now abide in other countries. Would he consider any Government proposals to deal with the legacy of our past to be morally repugnant if those individuals were allowed to come home and retire with a level of dignity that they never offered to their victims?

Domestic Abuse

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady, who does so much work not only in her constituency, but in a national context, to ensure that children and adults who are subjected to sexual exploitation are looked after properly. We are very aware of the concerns around the changes to pre-charge bail. The reforms were introduced to reduce the number of people and the length of time spent on pre-charge bail, but we do recognise that there are concerns in the criminal justice system about the way that that has worked out on the ground. We are working with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, HM Courts and Tribunals Service and others to ensure that these are addressed satisfactorily, including the consideration of both legislative and non-legislative options. I cannot give her an answer at the moment, but work is under way, and I hope that I can give her some information in due course.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

May I praise the Minister and her colleague the Minister for victims—the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar)—for the determined and principled position they have taken in championing the Bill? I am delighted that it is being introduced today and am particularly grateful that Northern Ireland provisions are contained within it. It is clearly in the public interest to include such provisions. We are grateful that they are taking this step and mindful that, on this issue, there is complete political consensus in Northern Ireland, so it is the right thing to do. I have also raised the issue of stalking with the Minister and would be grateful for her involvement. We have no legislative protection from stalking in Northern Ireland. Although it is not primarily attached to domestic abuse situations, I think that it is tangentially linked. I ask the Minister to engage with the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, as she has been doing on the domestic abuse provisions, and consider whether there is provision or space within this Bill to ensure that we get protection from stalking as well?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. We are grateful to everyone who represents Northern Ireland and take their seats in this House for their support. We are also grateful for the very clear message from him and others that they are keen for this offence of coercive controlling behaviour to be included in the Bill. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), and I are very happy to look into the situation that he has described. Clearly, omitting the offence of stalking from the statute book of Northern Ireland is not what anyone wants, and, certainly, we will consider whether we can include it in the Bill.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Victoria Atkins

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

I thank all Members across the House for their passionate and heartfelt views on these important topics. I welcome the indication from the shadow Minister that the Bill continues to have the support of the Opposition.

The first duty of Government is to keep the public safe. That is why we have brought the Bill forward, to give the police and other agencies the powers they need to tackle serious violence and crime. But it is the definition of democracy that Government must meet that duty in ways that are effective but also proportionate. We have some of the strongest gun laws in the world, particularly for rapid-fire rifles. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has indicated that his amendment is intended to be probing. However, those rifles remain in the Bill because we are concerned that they can discharge rounds at a rate that brings them much closer to self-loading rifles, which are already prohibited for civilian ownership under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968. Indeed, that appears to be one of the selling points for such rifles. We have therefore included them in the Bill, because we are of the view that the indiscriminate use of rapid-firing rifles, including lever-action rifles, is such that they should be prohibited in the same way as other full-bore, self-loading rifles. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe has raised the interests of disabled shooters. Of course that is part of our assessment, but we are satisfied that there are other rifles that those with disabilities can use if they are prevented from using these rifles.

Let me move on to air rifles. I know that the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) and the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) have run long campaigns on air rifles. I hope that they both know that we have conducted this review following the coroner’s report into the terrible and very sad death of Benjamin Wragge, a 13-year-old boy who was shot accidentally with an air weapon in 2016. As I said in Committee, we received more than 50,000 representations from members of the public, and the issues raised by the new clauses tabled by the hon. Lady and the right hon. Gentleman will be considered in that specialist review, which will be published shortly. I therefore ask them not to press their new clauses to a vote.

I want to make a small point that might assist the right hon. Member for Delyn in deciding whether to press new clause 19 to a vote. The new clause refers to trigger guards, rather than trigger locks. I understand that he wants to look at locks. At the moment, air weapons are fitted with trigger guards. But I am happy to have a conversation with him, and with any other Member, about the applicability of locks as part of the review process.

On Government amendments 26 to 55, I recognise the very, very strong feelings across the House. I spoke at the beginning about the balancing act—indeed, it is a discussion we had constantly in Committee—between effectiveness and proportionality. We saw that today, let alone on Second Reading and in Committee, in relation to clauses 30 and 31. The clauses were included in the Bill to strengthen the controls on high muzzle energy rifles. They are currently controlled under general licensing arrangements. The effect of the clauses would be to subject those rifles to the more rigorous controls provided by section 5 of the 1968 Act. This was because our law enforcement colleagues have concerns as to the potential effect if these rifles fall into the wrong hands. Our strong gun laws mean that those who shoot in the countryside or at ranges have met the standards expected in firearms licensing and by their local police force.

[Gavin Robinson]

I know the Minister has had extraordinary tension over this issue and has engaged very sincerely on it over the course of the Bill’s proceedings. I commend her commitment to public safety—I think unfair comments have been made today. I recognise, as a signatory of the amendment—others have signed it as well—that there is a willingness to engage sincerely in the consultation that she will bring forward to deal with this in the appropriate way.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He mentions the consultation, so I should formally mention our consideration of all the concerns we have listened to. The Home Secretary has listened very carefully to those concerns, as well as to the representations and advice from law enforcement colleagues. In the light of those circumstances, it is now the Home Secretary’s view that we should give further detailed consideration to this and other issues relating to firearms that have arisen during the course of the Bill. It is therefore our intention to launch a full public consultation on a range of issues on firearms safety that have arisen over the past few months during the passage of the Bill. Accordingly, we have decided to remove those clauses at this stage. I emphasise that the current licensing arrangements remain in place. The consultation will include other issues that have arisen, including for example, points relating to miniature rifle ranges raised by colleagues across the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman).

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman is drawing me into the incredibly complex area of applicability in Northern Ireland. He is right that many of the measures in the Bill have corresponding provisions for Northern Ireland, but I am sure that in due course I will be able to help the House with the particular point on corrosive substances, if I may return to that.

[Gavin Robinson]

The Minister will see in the Bill that for the specific provisions in clauses 1 to 4 it is for a newly appointed Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland to bring forward an order on the day that they so appoint.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

I hope that this new offence will attract widespread support across the Chamber. It recognises that some threats in private can be very serious indeed. I will therefore ask my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley not to press his amendments and I commend to the House new clauses 16 and 17 and amendment 25.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Victoria Atkins

Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Not at all. [Interruption.] It has never stopped me before. The new clause will help criminals to evade investigation, arrest and prosecution. Serious organised crime gangs and terrorists talk to each other. They compare notes on investigative activities, whether ongoing or not. It will not necessarily be the first, second or third notification that starts to hint at the methodology of the police; it may be the 20th, but none the less those hints about patterns of behaviour will begin to emerge in the criminal world. Why on earth would this House pass legislation that would give serious organised crime gangs and terrorist gangs such an advantage?

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful point, but she is talking about a fear of what may be to come. Is she aware that already in Northern Ireland, a chief dissident republican has had the case against him dropped because the judge ordered that the security service had to unveil its surveillance techniques? If that is the case already, imagine what would happen if every dissident republican and every terrorist in the country got notification.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention, which shows powerfully just how important this is. I am conscious of the time, so I will make just one more point about new clause 1. Subsection (1)(e) sets out that people are to be told if they have been informed on by covert human intelligence sources. That means informants, in everyday language. The new clause, if passed, would help criminal gangs to find out who is informing on them—and, presumably, to do great harm to those informants, because no criminal likes a grass.

I am conscious that new clause 16 mirrors much of new clause 1. It does not, in fairness, contain the reference to CHISs, but the fact is that it will have a similarly devastating effect on law enforcement and security service operations in this country.