Finances of the House of Commons

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Thomas Docherty

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye in what is the second of our annual debates on House of Commons estimates. It is a great tribute to how my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) has chaired his Committee that this whole matter has been brought before us so that a spotlight can be shone on the finances of the House of Commons, a highly complex organisation.

Since we started having these two annual debates, the whole culture of financial management in this place has changed. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and I served on the Committee in the last Parliament, during which time the emphasis was on how much money we could spend—and the more money spent, the better the project. Now it is all about trying to get value for money and making sure that the House is run efficiently. I have to say that that has been a huge improvement. The savings target of 17% will bring this place’s budget down to £200 million by 2015. It has been met only after a lot of hard work by the Finance and Services Committee. In that respect, I pay tribute to our staff, to the Clerk of the Committee and to members of the Management Board who help us in various aspects of the task.

On the ongoing pay dispute, I echo what other Members have said. I hope that, as a result of this debate, there is enough good will on both sides. The Chairman made particular reference to us wanting to be an exemplary employer and, on the other side, I hope that the unions will want to be exemplary pay negotiators. This matter could go out to some form of mediation so that it does not end up in the courts, lining the pockets of the lawyers, which I think would be a most unfortunate outcome.

I shall be brief, as much has already been said, but it is worth noting some of the savings we have made. The print-to-web project has saved £2.2 million, and the new ICT strategy has saved £2.4 million. I want to pay tribute to the Chairman of the Administration Committee —I was formerly a member—who has rightly championed the cause of opening this place up so that we can generate more income.

There has been some controversy in the debate over how much we should open up and to whom. In the same spirit of openness that this debate brings to the whole issue of House of Commons finances and how this place is run, I personally think that we should open it up and charge a commercial rate to anybody, providing they are legal, and that includes political parties and trade unions. They should be fully declared and the information should be fully open on the public register. After all, what is the difference between a political party or a trade union making a profit as opposed to a commercial bank making one? Provided everything is properly declared and provided a full commercial rate is paid, I cannot see the difference. Indeed, I put in a freedom of information request the other day relating to two events I sponsored last year, trying to ascertain exactly who was there and what they were all about.

I view that as the way to go forward. Let us put it all in the public domain. At the same time, however, the Chairman of the Administration Committee has made it perfectly clear that there are to be some exceptions to full commercial cost recovery, for charitable organisations or events run by Members, for example. I think a third category of events run by all-party groups could be considered. If they are registered, proper all-party groups—bearing in mind Mr Speaker’s dictum that they should not be in hock to any particular commercial organisation —it seems perfectly reasonable for them to benefit from the same regime of exceptions.

[Thomas Docherty]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we miss him on the Select Committee since he moved on to other things. On the point of all-party groups, the reality is that they might end up fronting for commercially organised events. That is why the all-party groups are not given the same exemptions.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened to my last few remarks, he would have heard that I clearly said “bearing in mind Mr Speaker’s dictum”, after his inquiry into all-party groups, that they should not be in hock to any particular commercial organisation. That is the proper basis for registering them in future. Just this last week, I have formed an integrated transport group to ensure that all methods of transport in this country mesh together. I have been clear about where the money for our secretariat is going to come from—not from one or two commercial firms. I would much prefer it if the money came from a trade organisation, a trade union or some membership organisation with a wide base of people.

[Thomas Docherty]

It is important to clarify this point. If an all-party group is meeting in a room, there is no charge. If, however, there is a dinner for an outside body that is clearly paying for it, it should not be possible to hide behind the all-party group name to get a big discount. That is the point of what we are trying to do.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Thomas Docherty

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I wish to speak to my amendments 38 and 39. I do so as chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, the secretariat for which is provided by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the specialist shooting body. The BASC has briefed me on these matters and I took some of its members to see the Secretary of State last week, when they were able to put the technical arguments against this matter being included in the Bill and thus becoming a devolved matter. I shall use the latitude that the clause stand part debate provides to make that argument, as well as the one for my two amendments.

My two amendments are straightforward. Amendment 38 seeks to withdraw all but the least powerful air weapons from these arrangements. Amendment 39 goes some way towards dealing with the cross-border issues that the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) described and with the issue of weapons being legal in England and Wales but becoming illegal in Scotland if the matter were devolved and the Scottish Parliament were to use its powers under the Bill.

In arguing against this becoming a devolved matter, it might be useful if I put the whole thing into context. Shooting contributes £240 million to the Scottish economy and airguns are the entry point into the sport. It is estimated that there are some 500,000 airguns in Scotland, compared with 4 million to 7 million in the UK as a whole. They are owned for a variety of lawful purposes, such as target shooting and pest control. The majority of airguns do not carry any serial or other identifying number, and very few need to be held on the authority of a firearms certificate because their capacity is below 12 ft/lbs. The location of nearly all current owners is unknown.

Some 52% of all Scottish airgun crime takes place in the Strathclyde police area and this appears to be an urban problem, rather than a countrywide problem. The call in this Bill for the devolution of airgun legislation has been made following the tragic death of two-year-old Andrew Morton, who was shot with an airgun by 27-year-old Mark Bonini, a drug user from Glasgow. The subsequent tabloid outrage and a campaign by the Scottish nationalists has resulted in a “Scottish appetite” for airgun legislation to be devolved, despite the fact that the current criminal justice system worked by sentencing Mark Bonini to life imprisonment.

There is therefore really no need for any further amendments to the firearms legislation. Numerous pieces of legislation are available to the police across Great Britain to deal with the misuse of airguns and three further pieces of airgun legislation have recently been passed by Westminster: the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, and the Crime and Security Act 2010. The Scottish police can also use the offence of reckless discharge, which is not available south of the border.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman said that 50% of these incidents took place in the Strathclyde police area and that there was some sort of link with this being an urban crime, not a rural one. Given that the Strathclyde police area stretches from the Dumfriesshire border with Ayrshire into the lowlands of the highlands, I am puzzled as to how he makes that link between urban crime and the Strathclyde police area.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

It comes from the number of offences that have been reported—no more, no less. The average number of Scottish airgun offences per annum since 1996 is 565 and the number of incidents has been falling since 2006-07.

The apparent rise in the use of airguns is likely to be the result of improved police reporting procedures, but other weapons, especially knives, are much more likely to be used in homicide offences in Scotland and, indeed, elsewhere. There is nothing peculiarly Scottish about airgun controls or crime, so there is no justification for creating a system for Scotland that differs from the current regime in England. It is not enough for Ministers to wash their hands of it on the ground that the democratic process will produce the right answer. The campaign for the devolution of powers regarding airguns has been fuelled by tabloid scaremongering such as that around the recent incident in Auchinleck in Ayrshire. It was initially reported that 18 schoolchildren had been shot by a sniper armed with an airgun equipped with a muzzle, but it later turned out that eight children had been hit by plastic pellets from a BB toy gun.

The coalition has rightly resolutely opposed knee-jerk legislation on firearms that is not based on sound evidence. The Calman commission produced no argument for devolving powers on airguns beyond the statement that

“there is appetite to deal with airguns differently in Scotland.”

I submit to the Minister that that is not a good basis for legislating on this matter. The commission produced no evidence to back that up.

The coalition has advocated having easily understood legislation that protects public safety, whichever part of the United Kingdom one comes from. Public safety is endangered by complex firearms laws, and having a different regime for airguns in Scotland will increase the complexity of firearms laws. Devolving power over airguns will destroy the internal logic of firearms legislation as a reserve power and will fuel calls for the devolution of all firearms law, which I note the Bill specifically does not do; all the most serious firearms legislation is still reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. There are already 36 offences that can be applied in relation to airgun misuse. The most recent legislation—the requirement in the Crime and Security Act 2010 to ensure that children do not have unrestricted access to airguns—came into effect only last month.

There is good evidence to suggest that increased powers, proper enforcement and education are behind the fall in airgun misuse that is most pronounced north of the border. The Government and Parliament are in the middle of a review of firearms legislation in the wake of Whitehaven, and Parliament is awaiting a response from the Home Office to the Select Committee on Home Affairs report on firearms. Devolving power over airguns in Scotland would be premature, would ignore the wider review and would mean having piecemeal legislation on firearms in response to outrage, which would damage effective legislation and enforcement. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland has stated that

“in the ideal world, for the sake of lack of confusion…one set of legislation would be the best option”,

and that, given the number of airguns in circulation,

“in relation to cost and resources from a policing perspective, there would be a definitive impact”.

It has also said that regulating airguns in Scotland could be difficult and costly. It stated:

“Ideally, we would prefer them to come under the Firearms Act”—

that of 1968, to which the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West referred, and that of 1997, in particular, both of which are referred to in my amendment—

“so we don’t have two sets of rules.”

If a licensing system of air weapons was introduced, it would have a disproportionate effect on the operational capacity of the Scottish police forces. As I have said, they would not have the time or the manpower to deal with the issue properly. The new work load would require a serious displacement of staff from other more important fields such as crime prevention and detection. Any change to laws on airgun ownership proposed by the Scottish Government could criminalise an estimated 500,000 law-abiding airgun owners in Scotland overnight. The consequences of any change in controls over air weapons in Scotland would not be confined to Scotland, but no consultations have been launched to canvass the opinions of people in England and Wales who might be affected by such changes when they travel over the border. Any ban on air weapon ownership imposed by the Scottish Government would adversely affect trade and would lead to a significant bill for compensation for those who legitimately own air weapons. Is the Minister going to pay compensation to those people who suddenly find themselves with illegal weapons, or will the weapons simply become useless, in which case those people will lose out considerably?