Offensive Weapons Bill (Second sitting)

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Many thanks. Colleagues, who would like to take the lead on these matters? Minister, do you have questions of a useful nature?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Q I do—thank you, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Good afternoon, witnesses. The Bill contains a clause that relates to high-powered rifles. Could you please explain about what those rifles are, their range and their ability to penetrate protective clothing or other items?

Christopher Lynn: Yes, thank you, Minister—[Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Don’t worry. That musical guitar thing merely means that the speaker in the main Chamber has changed. Why we do that I don’t know, but we always have done.

Christopher Lynn: The Bill deals with high-energy rifles that exceed 13,600 J of muzzle energy. On the capabilities of those rifles, there are shooting sports that deal with extreme-ranged weapons, and they fire at screen targets to register an extreme group at a range of about 2,000 yards. A lot of that sport has grown around weapons that originally had a military application. The most commonly encountered firearm on the domestic firearm certificate is chambered for the .50 Browning cartridge, which was developed between the wars for military applications.

We have engaged with and met the Ministry of Defence to take an objective look at the power of these weapons, and it has adopted two of those .50 rifles for anti-structure use in an MOD context. In order to get an idea of the power, we have identified that one of the MOD’s user requirements for these weapons is for it to immobilise a light or medium-size vehicle or truck at 1,800 metres. These weapons have an enormous energy, and we would support the view that they are inappropriately energetic for a sporting application. The sport seeks to register a hit on a screen or electronic target at 2,000 metres, and the NCA’s position is that there is no justification for a weapon of such excessive power to have such an effect.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Let us break that down. You talked about distance, but are you able to give us a distance in terms of local landmarks, to help us understand how far these weapons can go?

Christopher Lynn: I am not a Londoner, so I am not sure if I can—I am sorry, Minister. The MOD has a requirement out to 1,800 metres and 2,000 metres, but the .50 Browning round—the prohibition would not deal only with that cartridge—is effective out to 6,800 metres, according to MOD data. That is 6.8 km, which is an enormous range.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q At the moment, how many licence holders are there?

Christopher Lynn: I think that might be a question for my colleague.

Mark Groothuis: According to the national firearms licensing management system, where firearms licensing in England and Wales is held for the police, I can identify approximately 129 weapons that would be affected by the prohibition, should it come in. There will be more in the trade. We do not have a picture of how many are held by firearms dealers, so it will be more than that. Certainly, on firearms certificates, a minimum of 129.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q In the United Kingdom?

Mark Groothuis: In England and Wales. We do not know about Scotland.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Where can these weapons be fired?

Mark Groothuis: They tend to be fired on Ministry of Defence ranges because they are the only ranges that are large enough to incorporate this very long-distance target shooting.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q We heard concerns on Second Reading that none of the rifles that are proposed to be prohibited has ever been used in a crime before. Can the panel help us with that?

Mark Groothuis: Certainly, there is no example of their being used in crime recently. We have to go back to the troubles in Northern Ireland, when there was a suggestion that the .50 was being used to snipe members of the armed forces. So, we are going back to the ’80s. Other than that, there is no suggestion that legally held .50 rifles have been used in crime.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q So, what is the risk and threat posed by these weapons, such that we should ban them?

Mark Groothuis: The threat, as I see it, is that we see an increasing trend of legally held firearms being stolen from certificate holders. The number of guns being stolen is going up. I can give you some statistics, if you like. So far this year, on the national firearms licensing management system, we have got 39 rifles stolen, all of a different range of calibres—none of them .50—and 165 shotguns have been stolen. Again, we are seeing an increase in the use of firearms in crime—mainly shotguns, as they are the volume guns that are being stolen, but there have been examples of rifles coming into use by criminals. They are using them in possibly gang-related shootings.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q So, why is banning them the answer to that?

Mark Groothuis: It is simply a question, I suppose, of removing the risk. In having licences for these hugely powerful guns in the community there is always a risk that they will be stolen. Most, in fact all, of these guns are being kept in private domestic circumstances. If I am a firearms certificate holder and I have got a .50 rifle for long-range target shooting, I will keep it at home.

Although we could say, “Let’s increase the security,” there is only so much you can do to protect these sorts of premises. There are no club armouries for these sorts of guns; they are all kept at home. It is whether we wish to take the risk of these things being stolen. There was one stolen in July 2016, together with ammunition, along with four other rifles that were stolen. One of those was actually used in crime—in a shooting. The .50 was ultimately recovered and, in fact, it had had its barrel sawn off.

That does show that maybe the crime gangs—the criminals—do have an appetite to use these guns if they are stolen. My concern is that, if one of these guns were to be stolen, again with the ammunition, and if it were to get into terrorist hands, it could be very difficult to fight against or to protect against. There is very little—nothing, as far as I know—that the police service have that could go up against a .50 in the way of body armour or even protected vehicles.

It is just a risk you have to make a decision on. Because of the nature of the sport—it is just long-range target shooting; there is no quarry shooting involved in this—do we want to take that chance?

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Moving on to the MARS weapons that are also in the Bill, could you please explain why we are seeking to prohibit those?

Mark Groothuis: Do you mind if I hand over to Gregg Taylor from NABIS on that?

[The Chair]

Q Could I ask a stupid question? What is MARS?

[Victoria Atkins]

I think the witness is about to explain.

Gregg Taylor: Essentially, it is a manually activated release system. With the cycle of a semi-automatic rifle, you would normally chamber a round, and it would fire and then recycle itself, ready to be fired again with another pull of the trigger. What the manually activated release system does is to hold the bolt back temporarily, so the firer essentially has to pull the trigger twice. It is building a delay system into the mechanism. The Firearms Act 1968 would then classify that rifle as a section 1 rifle rather than a section 5 prohibited self-loading rifle. It has been designed to get around the UK firearms legislation—so it can be classified as section 1 rather than a prohibited weapon. What the mechanism does, if you fire one of these weapons, is to give you quite a high rate of fire, nearly equivalent to a regular self-loading rifle, with a simple double pull of the trigger.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Colleagues have voiced concerns about the potential impact this may have on disabled people. Can you help us with that point?

Gregg Taylor: Within the shooting community, if you have difficulty operating, say, a bolt-action rifle, I can see that something that would self-load might be an option for you, but the risk these weapons pose, and the fact that they were specifically designed to get around UK legislation, start to question the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which came in specifically to ban self-loading rifles other than .22 calibre. There may be other options for disabled shooters. Again, it comes down to the risk that these weapons pose.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q To finish the section on firearms, we are also seeking to prohibit the possession of bump stocks. Could someone explain what bump stocks are and why we are seeking to prohibit their possession?

Gregg Taylor: A bump stock is an additional grip mechanism that is attached to a regular self-loading weapon. What that does, when you attach the bump stock, is to allow you, essentially, to have a simulated full auto weapon. It is another device that has been specifically designed to turn a regular self-loading rifle into something more akin to a full auto. There are videos online that you can watch, and the rate of fire is extreme. Given the risk they pose to public safety, I think it is correct that they are in this Bill.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q There was an incident, sadly, in recent years where we saw the threat posed by bump stocks, was there not?

Gregg Taylor: In the US, yes, with the Las Vegas shooting. I think 12 out of the 14 weapons that were used in, or recovered from, that event had the bump stocks attached. We are all aware of the rate of fire and the number of people who were killed in that event.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Q Can I just confirm something? When you said 129 licences, was that just for the .50, or was that the total number of licences?

Mark Groothuis: It includes two other calibres: 14.5 mm and 20 mm. If the prohibition went ahead at 13,600 J, it would capture not only the .50, but larger and more powerful calibres as well. I believe the 14.5 mm firearms are effectively Soviet anti-tank weapons and the 20 many might be a bespoke-built firearm. Most of them are from a military background.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Just to clarify the point that Mr Groothuis made in answers to Miss Foxcroft, you made the point about there not being a requirement to show ID or the licence when sharing shotgun cartridges. It is not uncommon when people are using their shotguns lawfully on a shoot, in accordance with their licence, that they might hand shotgun cartridges to each other as part of the shooting.

Mark Groothuis: Yes, they may do, and there are exemptions within the Act that allow non-certificate holders to participate in such shooting. It just seems odd—or certainly weak, from my point of view—that it is so easy, as a matter of law, to hand over a very large quantity of ammunition to someone who has had no vetting or background checks. It puts so much shotgun ammunition into the public domain.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q So your concern is about volume as opposed to the act on the shoot of people handing cartridges to each other to help while they’re shooting.

Mark Groothuis: The volume is a concern, yes—the fact that it is just so easy to transfer shotgun ammunition. You shouldn’t be transferring shotgun ammunition to a prohibited person, but how do you know whether the person you are standing next to is prohibited or not? They could be prohibited by virtue of a suspended sentence or a custodial sentence. You would probably know about the custodial sentence if you are a close friend, but there might be someone who has got a suspended sentence, and they may be prohibited. I would also ask how some people who have got suspended sentences know they are prohibited because, as far as I know, there is no mechanism for educating them on that at the moment.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Can just come back to the points about the firearms licensing teams in the police? How big is the team in Durham, for example?

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: We are just over 10 people, and different forces will have different requirements. One thing that surprises a lot of people outside of this world is that the size of the force does not necessarily indicate the amount of work involved. North Yorkshire police is a small force but has a significant amount of firearms licensing and will have a bigger department, commensurably. That very often goes with the rural side of policing. As you have heard from the statistics, shotguns are a lot more prevalent than firearms.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q May I welcome our next witnesses, who come from the National Police Chiefs Council? Before I ask you to introduce yourselves, I want to let you know that at 3.30 pm strange bells will ring, which means there is a Division in the House. The Committee will be suspended for a quarter of an hour for one Division, or a quarter of an hour plus 10 minutes for each subsequent Division. There may be two or three, which could mean quite a long suspension. Do not be alarmed if the bells ring—it just means that we have to go and vote. Perhaps I could now ask you to introduce yourselves.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: Good afternoon. I am Duncan Ball, Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Met, and I am the National Police Chiefs Council lead for knife crime, gang crime and county lines.

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: Good afternoon. My name is Rachel Kearton. I am the Assistant Chief Constable at Suffolk constabulary and the National Police Chiefs Council lead for corrosive substances.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. My first question is to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Duncan Ball. Could you help us understand why we need to crack down on online sales of knives?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: Knife crime as a whole is hugely challenging, not just for police but the public sector and voluntary organisations in general. One thing we have been able to do, particularly over previous years, in addition to enforcement is to look at the retail sector within the high street. That is certainly a more traditional area for policing and other agencies to operate in.

One particular challenge we found over the past two or three years is the availability of knives and the access that young people in particular have to knives online. Although it is not a completely ungoverned space, clearly the opportunities are there for young people in particular to get hold of knives that they perhaps would not be able to across the normal shop counter. They are quite prevalent; one look through the internet will show the huge array of knives on sale.

We do quite a lot of regular test purchase operations, both with the police and trading standards. There are quite a number of fails, which mean in a shop sale context that the retailers are selling knives to under-18-year-olds, we also see that as a quite significant area as well online. We do see a number of cases where children, young people, are getting knives online. Certainly from a policing perspective, there is a real need to try to put some regulation and legislation around that, to try to restrict that access.

There is one point I would like to make. Because knife crime is so complex for so many different measures that we have to put in place, we certainly recognise that there is not a one size fits all; there is no one solution. In terms of marginal gains, every opportunity that we have to limit access and prevent the sale of knives to young people, particularly people under 18, is certainly an opportunity we would look to take hold of.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q To put those comments in context, could you give us an idea of the other things that the Metropolitan police and other constabularies across the country are doing, such as Operation Sceptre?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: You will be aware, Minister, that we ran Operation Sceptre earlier in the year, so we had all 43 forces, plus British Transport police, involved in that. That was a national knife crime week of action. We looked at a whole range of activities, from the most important part, clearly, of engagement with schools and prevention activity, through to test purchase operations with retailers, which I have just mentioned. It also included other preventive measures, such as weapons sweeps, so trying to remove knives from playgrounds and parks, where young children have ready access to them.

There was also a very strong enforcement message. Clearly, when people are using knives, we would rather they were not doing that in the first place. We had a strong enforcement drive, particularly round those who continually carry knives and use them with impunity. We see on a regular basis the absolute tragedy—we have seen a number of murders in London and nationally this year—that each of those crimes represents.

That was our week of national action but underlying that there is the daily work that goes on within forces, local communities and neighbourhood policing to reach out to young people in the prevention work that we do. There is also really robust enforcement around those people who do not choose to put their knives down and those who are obviously causing significant violence and harm to communities.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Thank you. Assistant Chief Constable Kearton, could you help us with how these measures in the Bill will help you and your colleagues police the sale and use of corrosive substances in violent attacks?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: There has been a lot of activity in the last 12 months on what can be done to moderate the use of corrosive substances and to make sure that they are in the right hands and are used for legitimate purposes. One point I would like to make is that the substances used are often legitimate household goods, which brings a number of difficulties and challenges around their control. However, the data return shows that they are being used by young people, and similar constraints on sale to under-18s will work alongside and in tandem with constraints on the sale of knives and other objects to help to control young people’s access to these substances, the use of which can cause significant psychological and physical harm.

On access and use in public places, the onus has previously been on police officers to identify those liquids, which is a challenge in itself; they have often been decanted into other containers and are not held in their original sales vessels. The onus is also on the police officer not only to say that something is a corrosive substance—it may just be a clear liquid—but that there is intent to use it for grievous bodily harm or in an offensive attack. This change will put the requirement on the individual on the street to explain the circumstances in which they are in possession of these corrosive substances.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q We obviously want to stop young people using acids in the first place. Are there any emerging thoughts on how we can prevent young people—or anyone—from using corrosive substances in such a vile manner?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: A lot of work has been put into a preventive strategy in the last 12 months, working very closely with the British Retail Consortium, which represents 170 or more retailers across the country. That activity has included voluntary agreements with those retailers to restrict sales to individuals that they have concerns about, communication to young people through education projects, and multi-agency work to emphasise the impact that these attacks can have. I again emphasise that psychological and physical impact, which I believe—based on the research done in recent months—has not been fully understood by a lot of our young people.

One example I want to highlight is Project Diffuse, which has been carried out by the Metropolitan police—working with the Institute of Licensing and the Security Industry Authority—in the context of nightclubs and licensed premises. It engages security personnel in the identification of liquids before they enter an entertainment premises and in taking appropriate action to remove substances that may cause harm. A lot is being done around prevention to address this emerging problem.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What is your analysis of why, particularly over the last four years, we have seen such a rise in knife, gun and acid-related crime? Why is it suddenly so prevalent?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: I will start with knife crime. There are obviously huge challenges in the knife crime picture at the moment. We have seen a 20% increase in knife crime nationally in the last calendar year. It is a hugely complex issue and there are a huge number of contributory factors.

One real issue with younger people coming through at the moment is their frame of reference and how they view knives. It could be argued that there is a social acceptance in some circles of the legitimacy of carrying knives. We can look at, for example, the impact of social media; people being anaesthetised to violence and sexual violence on the internet; pornography, which is readily available to young children; or video games. All those things end up anaesthetising them and with a certain acceptance of that sort of violence, or a predisposition to violent activity. They also play into a potential fear of crime in young people in particular; that is certainly something we hear from young children. We know that a lot of children or young people do not go out carrying a knife specifically to use it, but they will carry it for self-protection. The more that knife crime happens, the greater the risk of young people perceiving that the issue is worse than it is, and therefore going out with a knife and continuing to arm themselves.

There are some challenges with availability of diversion services for young people on knife crime. With austerity in general it is important that money is focused toward the right areas, and we have certainly seen some good initiatives for doing that. More than that, though, we see the rise in knife crime as being quite cyclical. If you look back over the years, it tends to rise and fall, and what is important in stemming that rise is recognising that it requires a whole systems approach.

Everybody has a part to play; it is not enforcement, because realistically, by the time the police get involved and somebody has actually picked up a knife it is perhaps too late. It is a multi-faceted challenge, and the answer is not one particular channel, but all agencies, charities and communities working across the sectors bearing down on that. The way I view knife crime is that every particular stabbing could, but for the skill of a surgeon’s knife, end up in murder and absolute tragedy.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q As you arrange yourselves, I will explain that you are from the British Retail Consortium and the British Independent Retailers Association. May I ask you, starting with Mr Wynn, to introduce yourselves for the record?

Graham Wynn: Graham Wynn, from the British Retail Consortium. I am assistant director for consumer and regulatory affairs.

Vin Vara: Vin Vara from the Tool Shop Group and past president of the British Independent Retailers Association.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q First of all, may I thank your different sets of members for signing up to the voluntary commitments to prevent the sale of corrosives to under-18s. Can you please tell the Committee how effective these voluntary commitments have been and what the response has been from staff members?

Graham Wynn: Retailers tell me the response has been to educate and train better, and that, ideally, it has worked. Of course, a legal requirement always brings an extra dimension, but retailers have been willing—because they realise the overall aim—to sign up to these voluntary commitments, both on knives and on corrosives. They cause some problems because they are voluntary; nevertheless, my understanding is that, in the companies that have signed up, to a large extent—I am not saying 100%—they have focused attention.

Vin Vara: The vast range of members in our association have generally welcomed the idea of this, and we had quite a few people sign up for it. Again, we gave “Oohs” and “Aahs” with it, asking, “Why do we need to do this?” and “Is it law yet?” They are asking far too many questions for us at the moment, but we do not have the right answers. We are trying to educate them. As Graham said, it is a process of getting education to them and the reasons why. It is working slowly.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q How are you going to work with your members if these voluntary arrangements become statutory?

Vin Vara: We have got a channel of communication—normally it is emailing and texting—but we also have a publication for our members, and we will be sending out guidance from the Home Office to all our members and other retailers on our target list.

Graham Wynn: The main desire is to be clear about exactly what people are supposed to do. That is one reason why we would particularly like to see clause 17 —the requirements there, and what you can and cannot deliver to a residential address—be perhaps a bit more precise, either in guidance or in the Bill itself. That’s knives, of course. We largely represent larger and medium-sized retailers, so they have their own processes for ensuring compliance with the law. Our role is to make sure they understand as far as possible what is required so that they can comply.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you share the concerns of the USDAW trade union about the criminalisation of shop workers and shop owners? Do you agree there should be an offence for attempting to purchase weapons, and what implications will the offence on shop workers and shop owners have for your members?

Graham Wynn: I understand from our surveys that there are probably about 50 offences a week—attacks—on shop workers. That is extrapolated from some research. We do share the USDAW view that carrying out an attack on a shop worker in the course of their employment should be a specific offence: either a generalised offence, or one that relates to age checking, but certainly some sort of specific offence. At the moment, people feel under threat, and that is one reason there is general support for the overall objectives of the Bill.