Offensive Weapons Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Louise Haigh and Nigel Huddleston

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

It is understandable why the tone of the debate has changed today. We have had a very co-operative cross-party approach so far. However, I hope the hon. Lady will not make the mistake of saying that there is a simple answer. I think she was alluding to this at the end of her speech. There are such things as personal responsibility and parental responsibility for serious crimes and we should not ignore that fact. The Government are spending more than £800 billion this year and Government net spending is increasing, but the most important thing we need to consider is that local decisions are being made. I get the hon. Lady’s point about police numbers, but in West Mercia, for example, we had an announcement yesterday of an increase in police numbers of 100. That is because of the choices that individual police and crime commissioners are making. We need to consider local responsibility as well.

[Louise Haigh]

I am not suggesting for a second that this is a simple issue—indeed, I believe I said explicitly a few minutes ago that these are very complex issues. No one is suggesting that a simple rise in police officer numbers will stem the surge in serious violence. That is why new clause 25 covers such a wide variety of the issues identified by the Home Office in relation to the rise in serious violence.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Louise Haigh and Nigel Huddleston

Thursday 19th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

Q Finally, is it just the energy value element that you object to? Do you have any issues with the bump stock part?

Christopher Graffius: I have no issues with the proposals in the Bill on bump stocks; I think you are quite right to do that. When it comes to the energy, though, there is no ballistic relevance to that energy limit. Indeed, it is quite possible that the rifle can be altered so it comes underneath that limit. If you try to legislate by limit, it may be possible to alter the rifle to comply with that.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q Mr Harriman, you said that you believe that instead of banning these rifles, we can better meet the concerns by specifying a high level of security. What would that mean?

Bill Harriman: One way I would always go at security is what people refer to as dispersion in separate units. You have the stock and the barrel in one steel cabinet, the bolt somewhere else—preferably in another room—and the ammunition somewhere else. You have to do three things to get the rifle, its component to make it function and the ammunition with which to fire it. I go back to what a Crown court judge said to me in, I think, 1991: security is a series of difficulties presented to a burglar. The more difficulties you present by dispersing things, the better the security is.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Louise Haigh and Nigel Huddleston

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

Q Could I get ammunition that easily as well?

Gregg Taylor: The ammunition is the issue. There are people out there who go to great lengths to make the ammunition to fit these obsolete calibres. As I have said, the gun itself is in full working order but is exempt as an antique under the Firearms Act.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q These questions are probably more for the detective chief superintendent. Can you give us some idea of the scale of firearms in the UK? How many people have firearms at the moment, and what are the trends? Is this going up; is it going down?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: NABIS collects data only on firearms that have been used in criminal offences. We do not collect data on the firearms that are held. With antique firearms, there are no restrictions, so there is no way of knowing how many people have an antique firearm. We look only at the criminal use of firearms.

In terms of the criminal use of firearms, from 1 April last year to 31 March this year—our performance year—there was a slight decrease in firearms discharges, compared with the previous year. However, from 2012, we are still high compared with previous years. In the last quarter of this performance year, from 1 April to the end of June, we have had 150 discharges, resulting in nine fatalities, compared with three fatalities from January to March, so at the moment we are seeing an increase in firearms offences.

Mark Groothuis: These are the statistics as of 31 March 2018 and as produced by the Home Office. There were 157,581 firearms certificates, covering 577,547 weapons on firearms certificates. There were 567,047 shotgun certificates, covering 1,359,368 shotguns; that is on a shotgun certificate.

Offensive Weapons Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Louise Haigh and Nigel Huddleston

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

Q Just to come back on that, the Government would obviously argue that they have a serious violence strategy and that there are measures alongside it. Do you actually oppose mandatory minimum sentences for under-18s?

Rob Owen: There have got to be two things. One is that there have to be regulations and laws, and I completely get that. At the same time, there has also got to be some form of common sense and humanisation about that situation and about what the best thing is for that person to ensure that they do not create another victim.

My experience of parents of victims, sadly, is that what they are most obsessed about is ensuring that no other child suffers and no other parent has to go through what they have gone through. What we are trying to achieve is that the best environment for that to happen is available. But that is often not just about sentencing; that has got to be about a package of support that is put in place.

Patrick Green: It is a difficult one. Certainly, from the victim’s perspective, many of the young people who have been victims of knife crime are often concerned that the perpetrator is back on the streets very quickly, and that heightens their feeling of insecurity. Our view in terms of first-time offences is, yes. Young people carry knives for a range of reasons; some of them may be around protection, and people are just making a mistake. Certainly, when it comes to second offences, there is due concern there about the young person falling into a trend and sentencing really playing a part in helping take that young person off the street.

The key issue is the support from the first offence to the second offence. I am not entirely sure that young people who are caught with a knife are getting the right level of support to help them and deter them from coming back on to the street the second time. The “two strikes and you’re out” should absolutely be the final option, but there should be a range of support. This is about rehabilitation and helping—as somebody said earlier on, if you are carrying a knife, it is almost a cry for help, and we should be doing far more around that.

John Poynton: Earlier this year, with Sarah Jones, we had young people from all around the country attend the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime to talk about their experiences. One of the overriding messages from them was that their experience of prison or the threat of prison was not a clear deterrent to being involved in risky or criminal behaviours. As Rob says, there needs to be a clear package of support. I think it is really important that that strategy is recognised. It is about vulnerability and safeguarding, and we need to look at how we support the young people.

The comment was made that young people are very clever at finding loopholes. We had a number of young women who talked about the fact that they are coerced into carrying weapons so that the young men are not caught carrying them. I am just making the point that the young people carrying the weapons are very possibly not the young people likely to be using them. That is a statement—just to recognise that young women and very vulnerable young children are coerced into behaviours that they would not otherwise deem normal on their own.

You cannot have a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I am very aware that the strategy is not saying that—it is putting a raft of support in to look at how we work with these young people—but my concern would be the classic “cry wolf” issue or the “but what about” point that Patrick made. Young people will always know of someone else who has been stopped twice holding a weapon, who, perhaps quite rightly for a number of reasons, may not have been given a mandatory sentence. The issue is that that will always become the narrative, “In that case, it is not going to happen to me.”

I would push for a really broad package of support for young people and a very simple narrative around the issue, so that young people recognise that they should not be carrying weapons. We also need to look at why these young people are being coerced into carrying weapons or drugs or other things that they would not normally do on their own.

Jaf Shah: May I flip back briefly to an earlier question around engagement with schools? As I mentioned, our engagement in the UK at a programmatic level is embryonic, but what we know from our work overseas in terms of engaging with schools, schoolchildren, teachers and so on, and engaging from a very young age, is that it is a very effective way of engaging with children about the repercussions of a violent act—in particular acid violence. By the very nature of acid attacks, the face is targeted, so you have a very visible form of violence. When survivors go into schools and talk with children, the impact is very strong. They certainly realise that there is a human beyond the facial disfigurement and that they have their own narrative, and that story carries a very strong message.

I was very interested when I visited Scotland and met Dr Christine Goodall from Medics Against Violence. I thought that their work was absolutely brilliant. It is a strand of work that could work particularly well with survivors of acid attacks engaging with school children.

To fast-forward to the most recent question, it is enormously difficult around the mandatory sentencing of under-18s, because there are many complicating factors. I have been hearing locally that young children are actually carrying acid in schools—but as protection, because it has become so commonplace. I think it is a very difficult subject in terms of having an absolute answer. It requires, as everyone else has mentioned, a far more sophisticated package of engagement with groups who might be affected.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q Mr Owen, I think you mentioned earlier that you are hearing about children as young as 10 or 11 carrying knives. At what age are children actually perpetrating acts of violence or being victims? How young are we talking about?

Rob Owen: Same age.