Offensive Weapons Bill

Julian Knight Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. I know that soon after the terrible crime in his constituency this weekend, he was on the scene with others. I look forward, if I have the opportunity, to discussing the incident with him in more detail and listening to his ideas. He is right that more is needed than just this Bill, and I assure him that these measures are part of a much larger sweep of action the Government are taking, which I will talk about in a moment. I also want to listen to colleagues such as him about what more we can do. I would be happy to do that and to discuss how we can prevent such crimes taking place on our streets.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

As a west midlands MP, I was surprised and shocked by the latest figures on gun and knife crime, because we have more gun crime per head of population than London. Will the Home Secretary elucidate how he thinks these new strategies will deal particularly with urban knife and gun crime?

[Sajid Javid]

I hope that my hon. Friend will agree with what I say about the Bill’s provisions on the sale of knives and on the possession of knives and acid—I will come on to certain firearms later. Taken together, these measures will help. However, as I said to our hon. Friend the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), other measures in the serious violence strategy will also help to make a big difference.

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[Theresa Villiers]

I do not. I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s highlighting of that problem. I am going to come on to it, because we need a fairer system for the allocation of resources in our capital city—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell).

I am concerned about the impact of the police station closure on visible police presence. Only today, I received a report of retailers being robbed in High Barnet, with a recent incident of men in balaclavas who were wielding weapons robbing a shop in broad daylight in front of frightened children. Over recent months, during the regular doorstep calls that I undertake in my constituency, many people have highlighted their anxiety about burglary. I appreciate that budgets are constrained, but I have appealed to the Mayor to give Barnet a fairer allocation of police resources to help provide concerted action on burglary and other crimes, including those involving the offensive weapons targeted in this Bill. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord), Barnet has fewer police per head than many other boroughs, although, sadly, we face a number of problems very similar to those of inner-London boroughs.

[Julian Knight]

What my right hon. Friend is saying is very resonant for me, because our police and crime commissioner closed our police station in Solihull. Burglars, in particular, often use fear-inducing weapons such zombie knives and death stars to commit violence. Does she agree that this Bill is very welcome in that respect?

[Theresa Villiers]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Burglary is a deeply distressing crime for its victims, but unfortunately it can be made very much worse by threats of violence and the use of weapons of the type targeted by this Bill.

The Mayor of London does have choices with regard to resources. He has, for example, about half a billion pounds in reserves. He is proudly allocating £150 million a year to cycling measures. He had earmarked £60 million to pedestrianise Oxford Street. This is not the occasion to debate the merits of those funding choices, but it shows that even with a small switch from those priorities to policing, the Mayor could keep our police station in Barnet open. It is not enough for him to seek to blame the resources he is given by Government. He has choices and he should make them in a responsible way that gives the suburbs their fair share of police resources.

Finally, I want to share with the House some very depressing news on a crime committed in my constituency at the weekend. On Sunday, thieves broke into the site of the Summer Soulstice festival in Mays Lane in Arkley. They used acetylene cutting gear and hammers to break into a safe and made off with over £45,000 in takings from the event that was awaiting transfer to the bank the next day. It seems that they may have deliberately planned the break-in to coincide with the England World cup game, when those clearing up after the festival had gone home to watch the football.

This crime is made all the more repellent by the fact that the Soulstice festival is entirely run by volunteers and all its proceeds go to a local charity, Cherry Lodge Cancer Care. The event was established in memory of Andy Weekes, who was sadly lost to cancer in 2006, and it has raised over a quarter of a million pounds for Cherry Lodge over the course of 11 years. The family of the late Andy Weekes and the whole team behind Soulstice are apparently devastated by what has happened. I am sure that the whole House will share my dismay about this crime. I do not imagine that the perpetrators are likely to read Hansard, but they should feel a deep sense of shame about what they have done. I very much hope that the police will catch them swiftly and that they will be locked up for a very long time indeed.

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[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I have to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I do not have any Proust. Instead, I will regale you with west midlands crime figures.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Crime figures will do fine.

[Julian Knight]

It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for the rather evocative-sounding South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). I thought that his speech was superb in its evocation and exploration of the rise in crime over such a long timescale. It was very informative indeed.

I agree with my right hon. Friend him about the glorification of knife culture in social media, which was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). We need to get a grip on social media companies, because they have a wide responsibility. They are not above and beyond society; they are part of society. We should not treat them in a way that makes them publishers, as it were, but they must be reminded of their responsibility to invest the necessary resources to ensure that such things are kept off their platforms, as quickly as possible.

This Bill represents a much-needed update in the law governing offensive weapons. It is an unfortunate fact that criminals are wont to adapt to new conditions when the law changes, so it is important for the Government to move swiftly to close loopholes when they arise.

I wanted to speak in the debate because of the almost silent gun and knife epidemic in the west midlands. It may surprise Members to know that the level of gun crime is higher there than it is in London: over 25 gun crimes per 100,000 people. In fact, the region is the only part of the country in which that level is reached. We also unfortunately have the third highest rate of knife crime of all areas of the country; only the Metropolitan police area and West Yorkshire are above us. To give a bit of context, Warwickshire abuts Birmingham and the West Midlands Police area, and knife crime in that area is about half the level that it is in the west midlands.

I see evidence of this on a regular basis in Solihull. We do not experience incidences of shootings and stabbings, thank goodness, at this time, and I hope this Bill will help to prevent any such incidences, but we are seeing a growth in aggravated acquisitive crime involving knives, particularly terror-inducing knives such as death star and zombie knives. I think of death stars as planet-killing weapons from “Star Wars”. Death star knives are absolutely shocking and there is no need for that knife to be in production at all, and there is no need for any individual to purchase such a knife. As acquisitive crime, particularly car crime, has increased, I have heard reports that criminals have sometimes brandished those knives. At present, because London gets a lot of focus there is not sufficient focus to ensure that we crack down as hard as possible. That is one of the reasons why I support the Bill; it will help indirectly to keep my residents safe.

The response of the police and crime commissioner has not helped the situation at all. Despite a massive rise in acquisitive crime—over 29% over the past year in Solihull borough—he has chosen to close, without any proper consultation, Solihull police station, effectively leaving 209,000 people without a police station. We have been promised that at some unspecified date in future there will be a new front desk effectively; that could be in a shopping centre or in Chelmsley Wood in the north of the borough. As a resident of the south of the borough, I can say that it is easier for me to get to Warwick than to get to Chelmsley Wood in the north of the borough. What message does that send out to the public when we are seeing an increase in violent acquisitive crime? Residents are saying, “We are paying our council taxes; Solihull residents are paying for an increase in precept, yet the police station is being closed.”

That will lead to longer response times. The police station is located at the centre of the constituency and of Solihull borough. If it is located at some unspecified date in the future in the north, there will be longer response times, or officers might have to come out of area from Coventry or parts of Birmingham. My residents are extremely concerned about that.

Turning to the mechanics of the Bill, the main policy concern is about balancing the Government’s aims against the rights and liberties of individual citizens. I take on board the point that many hon. Friends have mentioned about .50 calibre rifles, and I am glad that those concerns are being listened to by the Government and there is active engagement. I, too, have been approached by the law-abiding shooting community, which is very cognisant of the need for gun control and very supportive of it. It has said to me that there is always a possibility that people could end up not being able to pursue their sport because of this change. I am pleased that we are at least looking at that and addressing it.

More generally, criminalising the possession of these articles will make it much easier for the police to intervene before they are used against the public—my constituents. The Bill introduces sensible requirements for online vendors to ensure that they are not selling restricted articles to under-age buyers; this is another example of how technology and evolving consumer habits can leave the law behind.

While these specific measures will no doubt help to reduce the presence of dangerous weapons in our public spaces, I am glad that the Government recognise that the problem of violent crime cannot be tackled in isolation. In the foreword to the “Serious Violence Strategy” published in April the then Home Secretary made it clear that she intended to wage a comprehensive campaign that included not only law enforcement but charities, communities and the private sector, as well as health and education partners. That is commendable, and I hope that the Government will maintain that commitment, tackling not only violent crime but the driving forces behind it. That is something that has been reflected by the societal issues that have been raised in the debate today.

It is the first duty of the Government to protect the public, and it is right that the recent spate of vicious acid attacks has drawn a prompt legislative response. I have no doubt that the Bill will help to protect the public. This is the vilest crime that I can imagine. The horror of an individual splashing acid on to someone’s face would keep many of us awake at night. These crimes follow people throughout their lives, and we have seen instances in which people have taken their lives as a result of such acid attacks.

In conclusion, I support the Bill. In almost every respect, it is a fit and good Bill, and I look forward to supporting it. More generally, I want to send a loud and clear message to the West Midlands police and crime commissioner that the Government are doing their job and that he now needs to do his by ensuring that my community is properly protected and that we have a working police station in a town of 209,000 people.