Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) for his very thoughtful speech. I am also grateful to Opposition Front Benchers for their support for new clause 20.

It is clear from today’s debate that there are three separate issues to be discussed. There is the illegal use of guns that are held illegally, there is the illegal use of guns that are held legally, and there are the costs associated with guns that are entirely legally held and legally used. The first thing that we must do is ensure that those issues do not become confused with each other. Each of them relates to an extremely serious area of public policy, but the response to each of them needs to be different.

I cannot improve on much of what was said by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton about how tough we need to be on the criminal use of illegally held guns. I am grateful to him for his support for clauses 100 and 101 and the amendments to those clauses. They plug loopholes in the existing law, which will hopefully make policing the criminal use of illegally held guns—and illegally distributed guns, to which he rightly referred—less difficult.

As was made clear by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and by me in my opening remarks, the illegal use of legal guns can lead to terrible tragedies. The Atherton case, which was raised by the hon. Lady, left a huge scar on a family and, indeed, on a whole area, and gave rise to a number of recommendations. In my view, all that divides the two Front Benches on the issue is how effective we consider each other’s proposed methods of dealing with it would be. I shall not weary the House by repeating a speech that I made at the outset of the debate, but we have thought long and hard, and, moreover, have taken significant action since the Committee stage, when we last debated the issue. We published the new firearms guidance at the end of July.

Let me address directly the points that the hon. Lady reasonably made about individual court decisions. As she rightly said, I cannot comment on such decisions, not least in view of the fact that her comments were slightly opaque because, understandably, she could not mention names. I can only reiterate that the new guidance makes it absolutely clear that evidence of domestic violence and abuse will generally indicate that an individual should not be permitted to possess a firearm. It would be difficult to make it clearer that that is the way in which the court should interpret the guidance in the event of an appeal.

One of the other lessons that the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the coroner drew in the Atherton case was that police enforcement needs to be more effective. We can write laws or guidance, but ultimately it is the human beings who execute those laws that make the difference. We are working with the national policing lead for firearms licensing to ensure that police all over the country, in every police force, have a more detailed awareness and understanding of the Home Office guide. As I have said, the College of Policing will publish authorised professional practice on firearms licensing, which will complement and cross-refer to the Home Office guide. In addition, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has been conducting a scoping exercise, and will use the evidence from that to decide whether a full firearms licensing inspection should take place.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I hope that, in the course of his deliberations, the Minister will consider some of my constituents who, although they are by no means wealthy, enjoy participating in target practice or clay pigeon shooting. I hope that, as a result of this process, shooting will not become the preserve of the rich.

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. I shall deal shortly with the third issue that I identified earlier, namely the costs of legally held guns.