7 March 2011
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who is chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, tells MPs that if the power to outlaw airguns is devolved to the Scottish Parliament they may act prematurely and create knee-jerk legislation on firearms.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con): I wish to speak to my amendments 38 and 39. I do so as chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, the secretariat for which is provided by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the specialist shooting body. The BASC has briefed me on these matters and I took some of its members to see the Secretary of State last week, when they were able to put the technical arguments against this matter being included in the Bill and thus becoming a devolved matter. I shall use the latitude that the clause stand part debate provides to make that argument, as well as the one for my two amendments.
My two amendments are straightforward. Amendment 38 seeks to withdraw all but the least powerful air weapons from these arrangements. Amendment 39 goes some way towards dealing with the cross-border issues that the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) described and with the issue of weapons being legal in England and Wales but becoming illegal in Scotland if the matter were devolved and the Scottish Parliament were to use its powers under the Bill.
In arguing against this becoming a devolved matter, it might be useful if I put the whole thing into context. Shooting contributes £240 million to the Scottish economy and airguns are the entry point into the sport. It is estimated that there are some 500,000 airguns in Scotland, compared with 4 million to 7 million in the UK as a whole. They are owned for a variety of lawful purposes, such as target shooting and pest control. The majority of airguns do not carry any serial or other identifying number, and very few need to be held on the authority of a firearms certificate because their capacity is below 12 ft/lbs. The location of nearly all current owners is unknown.
Some 52% of all Scottish airgun crime takes place in the Strathclyde police area and this appears to be an urban problem, rather than a countrywide problem. The call in this Bill for the devolution of airgun legislation has been made following the tragic death of two-year-old Andrew Morton, who was shot with an airgun by 27-year-old Mark Bonini, a drug user from Glasgow. The subsequent tabloid outrage and a campaign by the Scottish nationalists has resulted in a "Scottish appetite" for airgun legislation to be devolved, despite the fact that the current criminal justice system worked by sentencing Mark Bonini to life imprisonment.
There is therefore really no need for any further amendments to the firearms legislation. Numerous pieces of legislation are available to the police across Great Britain to deal with the misuse of airguns and three further pieces of airgun legislation have recently been passed by Westminster: the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, and the Crime and Security Act 2010. The Scottish police can also use the offence of reckless discharge, which is not available south of the border.
Thomas Docherty: The hon. Gentleman said that 50% of these incidents took place in the Strathclyde police area and that there was some sort of link with this being an urban crime, not a rural one. Given that the Strathclyde police area stretches from the Dumfriesshire border with Ayrshire into the lowlands of the highlands, I am puzzled as to how he makes that link between urban crime and the Strathclyde police area.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: It comes from the number of offences that have been reported-no more, no less. The average number of Scottish airgun offences per annum since 1996 is 565 and the number of incidents has been falling since 2006-07.
The apparent rise in the use of airguns is likely to be the result of improved police reporting procedures, but other weapons, especially knives, are much more likely to be used in homicide offences in Scotland and, indeed, elsewhere. There is nothing peculiarly Scottish about airgun controls or crime, so there is no justification for creating a system for Scotland that differs from the current regime in England. It is not enough for Ministers to wash their hands of it on the ground that the democratic process will produce the right answer. The campaign for the devolution of powers regarding airguns has been fuelled by tabloid scaremongering such as that around the recent incident in Auchinleck in Ayrshire. It was initially reported that 18 schoolchildren had been shot by a sniper armed with an airgun equipped with a muzzle, but it later turned out that eight children had been hit by plastic pellets from a BB toy gun.
The coalition has rightly resolutely opposed knee-jerk legislation on firearms that is not based on sound evidence. The Calman commission produced no argument for devolving powers on airguns beyond the statement that
I submit to the Minister that that is not a good basis for legislating on this matter. The commission produced no evidence to back that up.
The coalition has advocated having easily understood legislation that protects public safety, whichever part of the United Kingdom one comes from. Public safety is endangered by complex firearms laws, and having a different regime for airguns in Scotland will increase the complexity of firearms laws. Devolving power over airguns will destroy the internal logic of firearms legislation as a reserve power and will fuel calls for the devolution of all firearms law, which I note the Bill specifically does not do; all the most serious firearms legislation is still reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. There are already 36 offences that can be applied in relation to airgun misuse. The most recent legislation-the requirement in the Crime and Security Act 2010 to ensure that children do not have unrestricted access to airguns-came into effect only last month.
There is good evidence to suggest that increased powers, proper enforcement and education are behind the fall in airgun misuse that is most pronounced north of the border. The Government and Parliament are in the middle of a review of firearms legislation in the wake of Whitehaven, and Parliament is awaiting a response from the Home Office to the Select Committee on Home Affairs report on firearms. Devolving power over airguns in Scotland would be premature, would ignore the wider review and would mean having piecemeal legislation on firearms in response to outrage, which would damage effective legislation and enforcement. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland has stated that
and that, given the number of airguns in circulation,
It has also said that regulating airguns in Scotland could be difficult and costly. It stated:
that of 1968, to which the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West referred, and that of 1997, in particular, both of which are referred to in my amendment-
If a licensing system of air weapons was introduced, it would have a disproportionate effect on the operational capacity of the Scottish police forces. As I have said, they would not have the time or the manpower to deal with the issue properly. The new work load would require a serious displacement of staff from other more important fields such as crime prevention and detection. Any change to laws on airgun ownership proposed by the Scottish Government could criminalise an estimated 500,000 law-abiding airgun owners in Scotland overnight. The consequences of any change in controls over air weapons in Scotland would not be confined to Scotland, but no consultations have been launched to canvass the opinions of people in England and Wales who might be affected by such changes when they travel over the border. Any ban on air weapon ownership imposed by the Scottish Government would adversely affect trade and would lead to a significant bill for compensation for those who legitimately own air weapons. Is the Minister going to pay compensation to those people who suddenly find themselves with illegal weapons, or will the weapons simply become useless, in which case those people will lose out considerably?
7.15 pm
The absence of border controls between Scotland, England and Wales is likely to lead to non-compliance. If the Minister doubts that, let me cite an example. Since the 2004 English ban on self-contained air cartridge firearms, which are often called Brococks, of the 70,000 estimated to be in circulation, less than 10% have been registered, so there is widespread breaking of the law, but few people that I know of have been prosecuted because it simply is not possible to find them. Major restriction on air weapon ownership would make it impossible for Scotland to host the Commonwealth games or other major sporting events, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West pointed out.
Let me put my suggestions and alternatives to the Minister and then I will conclude. Education is having an impact. BASC, which I have mentioned, runs "young shots" days, and the Scottish Countryside Alliance offers next-generation days, at which BASC Scotland provides airgun and shotgun tuition to teach and remind many hundreds of youngsters about the safe and proper way to use airguns-something to which we would all subscribe. We should continue to encourage the police to circulate BASC's airgun codes of practice, which already reach tens of thousands of people, and focus on enforcing existing law. We should also encourage people to try target shooting with airguns at clubs so that people of all ages can learn about the safe use of airguns in a controlled environment by qualified instructors and realise that airguns are capable of inflicting a lethal injury if misused.
I have to say to the Minister that I think the whole airgun issue has been driven by a tabloid press feeding frenzy on one or two incidents. I understand that, and the same thing would happen if those incidents occurred in England.
Jim McGovern: The hon. Gentleman mentions the tabloid press. I am sure he is aware that in the past week or so, the tabloid press have had a feeding frenzy about two football coaches in Glasgow falling out with each other, but there does not seem to have been the same feeding frenzy about an England football player taking an air weapon to a training ground and shooting someone.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I welcome that intervention. I take any infringement of airgun law very seriously indeed. Anyone who has an airgun, firearm or shotgun should use it safely and according to the law. I do not diminish incidents when they happen; I am merely saying that whether they happened in Scotland or England there would be the same tabloid coverage. I simply say, in all seriousness to all concerned, that I think we are better with one set of UK-wide firearms legislation, given that this is such a serious subject, so that everyone who uses a firearm of any sort, whether a shotgun, airgun or licensed firearm, knows exactly what the law is. Having different laws in the Principalities of the United Kingdom will lead to trouble.
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Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con): I wish to speak to my amendments 38 and 39. I do so as chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, the secretariat for which is provided by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the specialist shooting body. The BASC has briefed me on these matters and I took some of its members to see the Secretary of State last week, when they were able to put the technical arguments against this matter being included in the Bill and thus becoming a devolved matter. I shall use the latitude that the clause stand part debate provides to make that argument, as well as the one for my two amendments.
My two amendments are straightforward. Amendment 38 seeks to withdraw all but the least powerful air weapons from these arrangements. Amendment 39 goes some way towards dealing with the cross-border issues that the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) described and with the issue of weapons being legal in England and Wales but becoming illegal in Scotland if the matter were devolved and the Scottish Parliament were to use its powers under the Bill.
In arguing against this becoming a devolved matter, it might be useful if I put the whole thing into context. Shooting contributes £240 million to the Scottish economy and airguns are the entry point into the sport. It is estimated that there are some 500,000 airguns in Scotland, compared with 4 million to 7 million in the UK as a whole. They are owned for a variety of lawful purposes, such as target shooting and pest control. The majority of airguns do not carry any serial or other identifying number, and very few need to be held on the authority of a firearms certificate because their capacity is below 12 ft/lbs. The location of nearly all current owners is unknown.
Some 52% of all Scottish airgun crime takes place in the Strathclyde police area and this appears to be an urban problem, rather than a countrywide problem. The call in this Bill for the devolution of airgun legislation has been made following the tragic death of two-year-old Andrew Morton, who was shot with an airgun by 27-year-old Mark Bonini, a drug user from Glasgow. The subsequent tabloid outrage and a campaign by the Scottish nationalists has resulted in a "Scottish appetite" for airgun legislation to be devolved, despite the fact that the current criminal justice system worked by sentencing Mark Bonini to life imprisonment.
There is therefore really no need for any further amendments to the firearms legislation. Numerous pieces of legislation are available to the police across Great Britain to deal with the misuse of airguns and three further pieces of airgun legislation have recently been passed by Westminster: the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, and the Crime and Security Act 2010. The Scottish police can also use the offence of reckless discharge, which is not available south of the border.
Thomas Docherty: The hon. Gentleman said that 50% of these incidents took place in the Strathclyde police area and that there was some sort of link with this being an urban crime, not a rural one. Given that the Strathclyde police area stretches from the Dumfriesshire border with Ayrshire into the lowlands of the highlands, I am puzzled as to how he makes that link between urban crime and the Strathclyde police area.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: It comes from the number of offences that have been reported-no more, no less. The average number of Scottish airgun offences per annum since 1996 is 565 and the number of incidents has been falling since 2006-07.
The apparent rise in the use of airguns is likely to be the result of improved police reporting procedures, but other weapons, especially knives, are much more likely to be used in homicide offences in Scotland and, indeed, elsewhere. There is nothing peculiarly Scottish about airgun controls or crime, so there is no justification for creating a system for Scotland that differs from the current regime in England. It is not enough for Ministers to wash their hands of it on the ground that the democratic process will produce the right answer. The campaign for the devolution of powers regarding airguns has been fuelled by tabloid scaremongering such as that around the recent incident in Auchinleck in Ayrshire. It was initially reported that 18 schoolchildren had been shot by a sniper armed with an airgun equipped with a muzzle, but it later turned out that eight children had been hit by plastic pellets from a BB toy gun.
The coalition has rightly resolutely opposed knee-jerk legislation on firearms that is not based on sound evidence. The Calman commission produced no argument for devolving powers on airguns beyond the statement that
"there is appetite to deal with airguns differently in Scotland."
I submit to the Minister that that is not a good basis for legislating on this matter. The commission produced no evidence to back that up.
The coalition has advocated having easily understood legislation that protects public safety, whichever part of the United Kingdom one comes from. Public safety is endangered by complex firearms laws, and having a different regime for airguns in Scotland will increase the complexity of firearms laws. Devolving power over airguns will destroy the internal logic of firearms legislation as a reserve power and will fuel calls for the devolution of all firearms law, which I note the Bill specifically does not do; all the most serious firearms legislation is still reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. There are already 36 offences that can be applied in relation to airgun misuse. The most recent legislation-the requirement in the Crime and Security Act 2010 to ensure that children do not have unrestricted access to airguns-came into effect only last month.
There is good evidence to suggest that increased powers, proper enforcement and education are behind the fall in airgun misuse that is most pronounced north of the border. The Government and Parliament are in the middle of a review of firearms legislation in the wake of Whitehaven, and Parliament is awaiting a response from the Home Office to the Select Committee on Home Affairs report on firearms. Devolving power over airguns in Scotland would be premature, would ignore the wider review and would mean having piecemeal legislation on firearms in response to outrage, which would damage effective legislation and enforcement. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland has stated that
"in the ideal world, for the sake of lack of confusion...one set of legislation would be the best option",
and that, given the number of airguns in circulation,
"in relation to cost and resources from a policing perspective, there would be a definitive impact".
It has also said that regulating airguns in Scotland could be difficult and costly. It stated:
"Ideally, we would prefer them to come under the Firearms Act"-
that of 1968, to which the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West referred, and that of 1997, in particular, both of which are referred to in my amendment-
"so we don't have two sets of rules."
If a licensing system of air weapons was introduced, it would have a disproportionate effect on the operational capacity of the Scottish police forces. As I have said, they would not have the time or the manpower to deal with the issue properly. The new work load would require a serious displacement of staff from other more important fields such as crime prevention and detection. Any change to laws on airgun ownership proposed by the Scottish Government could criminalise an estimated 500,000 law-abiding airgun owners in Scotland overnight. The consequences of any change in controls over air weapons in Scotland would not be confined to Scotland, but no consultations have been launched to canvass the opinions of people in England and Wales who might be affected by such changes when they travel over the border. Any ban on air weapon ownership imposed by the Scottish Government would adversely affect trade and would lead to a significant bill for compensation for those who legitimately own air weapons. Is the Minister going to pay compensation to those people who suddenly find themselves with illegal weapons, or will the weapons simply become useless, in which case those people will lose out considerably?
7.15 pm
The absence of border controls between Scotland, England and Wales is likely to lead to non-compliance. If the Minister doubts that, let me cite an example. Since the 2004 English ban on self-contained air cartridge firearms, which are often called Brococks, of the 70,000 estimated to be in circulation, less than 10% have been registered, so there is widespread breaking of the law, but few people that I know of have been prosecuted because it simply is not possible to find them. Major restriction on air weapon ownership would make it impossible for Scotland to host the Commonwealth games or other major sporting events, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West pointed out.
Let me put my suggestions and alternatives to the Minister and then I will conclude. Education is having an impact. BASC, which I have mentioned, runs "young shots" days, and the Scottish Countryside Alliance offers next-generation days, at which BASC Scotland provides airgun and shotgun tuition to teach and remind many hundreds of youngsters about the safe and proper way to use airguns-something to which we would all subscribe. We should continue to encourage the police to circulate BASC's airgun codes of practice, which already reach tens of thousands of people, and focus on enforcing existing law. We should also encourage people to try target shooting with airguns at clubs so that people of all ages can learn about the safe use of airguns in a controlled environment by qualified instructors and realise that airguns are capable of inflicting a lethal injury if misused.
I have to say to the Minister that I think the whole airgun issue has been driven by a tabloid press feeding frenzy on one or two incidents. I understand that, and the same thing would happen if those incidents occurred in England.
Jim McGovern: The hon. Gentleman mentions the tabloid press. I am sure he is aware that in the past week or so, the tabloid press have had a feeding frenzy about two football coaches in Glasgow falling out with each other, but there does not seem to have been the same feeding frenzy about an England football player taking an air weapon to a training ground and shooting someone.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I welcome that intervention. I take any infringement of airgun law very seriously indeed. Anyone who has an airgun, firearm or shotgun should use it safely and according to the law. I do not diminish incidents when they happen; I am merely saying that whether they happened in Scotland or England there would be the same tabloid coverage. I simply say, in all seriousness to all concerned, that I think we are better with one set of UK-wide firearms legislation, given that this is such a serious subject, so that everyone who uses a firearm of any sort, whether a shotgun, airgun or licensed firearm, knows exactly what the law is. Having different laws in the Principalities of the United Kingdom will lead to trouble.
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