Draft Surrender of Offensive Weapons (Compensation) Regulations 2020

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 General Committees

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Ms Elliott, to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the Minister for his remarks. Labour Members do not intend to divide the Committee on these draft regulations and I will not keep the Committee here too long.

The Opposition support the proposals in the instrument to reimburse those in possession of weapons now banned under the Offensive Weapons Act. We will work with the Government, the police, partners and other public bodies to tackle knife crime and serious violence on our streets. Today we are discussing a technical piece of legislation that is limited in scope, but has implications for the vital task of reducing the number of dangerous weapons on our streets. Although we support the provisions in this limited instrument, the Government’s approach to reducing violent crime, particularly knife crime, has been inadequate, as violent crime has continued to rise following a decade of underinvestment in policing, which has resulted in the loss of thousands of officers, police community support officers and staff.

At the same time, demand on the police from recorded crime and non-crime duties has increased substantially. The role of the police keeps expanding, but the resources are not yet there. The Offensive Weapons Act was an opportunity for the Government to make productive changes based on evidence to bring down the decade-long rise in knife crime levels that we have seen under their watch. The Act failed to go far enough. The limited measures outlined in the 2019 Act and in this instrument must work alongside action to tackle the root causes of crime.

I regularly hear from police officers who are worried about how they will manage with the limited resources to tackle rising crime, enforce the Government’s coronavirus restrictions and manage the growing number of non-crime incidents that the police are called to as the service of last resort.

The impact assessment outlines the costs to the police to provide individuals who held weapons legitimately prior to the offence’s introduction with the opportunity to surrender their offensive weapon and claim compensation. It states that police forces have provided an average estimated cost of approximately £8,000 per force to run a full amnesty, equating to a total cost of approximately £0.3 million across all forces in the first year as an upper-bound estimate. Will the Minister confirm the date that the surrender of weapons scheme will commence and whether the money will be made available to the police, and how will it be made available and paid?

Another point on which I would like clarification is the standard rate of £30 for compensation and the fact that no compensation is payable in respect of a claim that amounts to less than £30. Will the Minister explain to the House the reasons for coming up with that figure? Furthermore, can he clarify Home Office plans to monitor and review the compensation process? The impact assessment for the Bill that became the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 says that

“the number of weapons eligible for compensation…is likely to be small”,

given that it has not been legal to purchase most of those weapons for several decades.

The Opposition want to remind the Minister again that this country is facing record levels of knife crime. With incidents continuing to rise across the country, we need a long-term public health approach to tackling violent crime. The limited provision of the Offensive Weapons Act means that this statutory instrument is much more likely to remove from a farmer a weapon that has been in his shed for 20 years than a knife from a vulnerable young person who is carrying it for self-defence.

I conclude by reiterating that we support this draft legislation, even though we are disappointed that the Act with which it is in accordance does not go far enough to reduce the number of people carrying dangerous weapons on our streets.