New Schedule 1 - ‘Weapons, etc: corresponding provisions for northern ireland
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
9:00 pm
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
I join the hon. Gentleman, Mr. Benton, in thanking you and Mr. Forth for your excellent chairing of the Committee. I hope that we have broadly kept in order. We have made excellent progress. I apologise to Members for the fact that we have had to sit a little late this evening, but I am delighted that we do not have to sit on Thursday morning. I am also very pleased that we have managed to scrutinise all the Bill’s provisions. I said at the outset that I wanted to make sure that the Committee had the opportunity to do that.
I thank the Clerk, all the officials, the Doorkeeper and, particularly, my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), who has kept me in order. He has just told me that in our last debate the hon. Member for Hertsmere was “illuminating”. Perhaps that chink of light is illuminating; I do not know.
I thank my hon. Friends on the Labour Benches, particularly the new Members, for whom this is their first Committee. Sitting on a Committee such as this one, which has been broadly good-tempered, is excellent experience for new Members. It has certainly been an excellent experience for me; I have learned more about firearms than I ever thought I would know, and I thank the hon. Member for Huntingdon for taking through the clauses on that subject.
My thanks to my Whip. I do not know whether I have a career in front of me, but I certainly have one behind me; perhaps I will be reverting to it. I thank the hon. Members for Hornsey and Wood Green for her contributions, and I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, who is unfortunately not in his place. I have learned so much about crofting, the Atholl Highlanders and the western isles that I am sorely tempted to spend my next summer holiday there. Who knows, I might get invited to his castle.
My particular thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington and for Brent, South who really brought a degree of focus and realism to some of the problems that we have tried to deal with during Committee. I am grateful for everybody’s co-operation, and no doubt we will return to a whole series of issues on Report.