Clause 24 - Using someone to mind a weapon
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
2:15 pm
John Thurso (Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland (And Transport), Scotland; Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, Liberal Democrat)
If I may continue to develop the argument, I intend to come to precisely that point. As a legitimate weapon user, I am concerned that when we come to legislate, we do so effectively and do not put forward legislation that has the unintentional consequence of depriving legitimate users of the ability to use their weapon, while failing to tackle those who would seek to use guns illegally.
We must focus on illegal use. I am sure that there are many Members in the Committee who have been briefed on the availability of illegal weapons. Those weapons are not registered, nor are they part of the legal system, but they can be purchased. I have been briefed on the pistols, machine guns and all sorts of weapons that can be acquired openly in some areas. We must ensure that the legislation we pass achieves what we seek to achieve.
I have just gone through the firearms certificate renewal process. I have had to obtain two referees and, as I am sure most members of the Committee will know, a report from my doctor. That was the difficult bit. I shall be interviewed by firearms officers in Thurso, who will visit the sites at which the weapons are kept. They will test the security of the sites and ensure—they have asked me to certify this—that there is nobody who has access to those sites who is not also a firearms certificate holder. For example, as my wife has a shotgun certificate but not a firearms certificate, she can access one gun cabinet that holds shotguns, but she cannot access another cabinet that holds certificated firearms—[Interruption.] Mr. Forth will I am sure understand that one must have a duty of security with such things, and that there are thresholds that one must consider.
The important point to which I wish to draw the Committee’s attention is that there is a great deal of legislation. Since I first held a certificate during the late 1960s and early 1970s, there has been a considerable mass of legislation and a lot of control now exists.
Through the amendments, I am seeking to find out the Government’s thinking and work out whether we are overstepping the mark or whether we have got the balance right. Amendment No. 147 would insert the word “intentionally” into subsection (1)(a) so that it would read
“A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a)he intentionally uses another to look after, hide or transport a dangerous weapon”.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green asked me how it can be that one could do this unintentionally. It is actually very easily done, and I was very nearly guilty of it myself. When transporting a shotgun from A to B, a clay pigeon shoot or whatever, by car people are required to keep it in a locked boot—absolutely properly. If a person is travelling with a good friend and perfectly respectable person who does not have a shotgun certificate and at some point asks them to drive the car it may be, as nearly happened to me, that the person forgets that there is a weapon locked in the boot of the car. Under the clause, that person would have committed a crime.
We have to consider what would happen, and we are looking at terms of imprisonment of not less than five years in some cases and not less than three in others. There is a great difference between someone who is actively engaged in criminal activity and almost certainly operating with an illegal weapon, who gets someone else deliberately to transport that weapon to another point so that they can commit a murder, stick-up or whatever, and a circumstance where a legitimate gun owner may find that he or she has broken the law. We have to be careful that we do not create criminals out of people who are striving to stay within the law; we must target the legislation at those who are deliberately flouting it.