Orders of the Day — Firearms (Amendment) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:33 pm on 21 January 1988.

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Photo of Douglas Hogg Douglas Hogg The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department 9:33, 21 January 1988

I am not certain whether it is necessary for me to declare an interest, but I do so. In common with almost every hon. Member who has spoken—certainly from the Conservative Benches—I have a shotgun certificate. I shoot frequently, although perhaps not as frequently as I would like, and I rather fancy that after this debate I will receive fewer invitations.

When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary introduced the Bill, he reminded the House of the need to achieve a proper balance between the legitimate interests of the shooting community and the need to provide a proper and sufficient system of firearms control. Both of those considerations are important to us and when we framed our proposals we tried to take them both into account. Our purpose has been to make firearms legislation more effective in its implementation and more reassuring to the public, without imposing on the shooting community restrictions that are unjustified in their objective or unreasonable in their application.

I acknowledge that we have brought our proposals before the House with some dispatch. That was our duty. However, we have consulted widely and shall continue to do so. The pillars of the policy are in place and I hope that they will remain in place. But my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I are not so arrogant as to assume that the Bill is necessarily perfect. [Interruption.] I fancy that that observation is attractive to my hon. Friends. Because we are not arrogant, we shall examine carefully the suggestions and criticisms that will certainly be made during the Bill's passage through Parliament.

Let me say something brief about the official Opposition. It merits only a few brief words. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) claimed responsibility for some of the Bill's provisions. He flatters himself. He referred to our discussions of the "good reason" provision on 26 October 1987. On that occasion he called for the full application of section 1 control to shotguns. The Government decided that that was wholly unjustified because under section 1 control the applicant has to establish a good reason in each and every case. That is not what we propose for shotgun applicants.

Moreover, we have taken care to ensure — I shall return to this—that the definition of "good reason" is placed on the face of the Bill to protect the legitimate interests of the shooting community, of which I am a member. Therefore, it is wrong for the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook to claim that he was responsible. Furthermore, in October the right hon. Gentleman said that there should be a justification for each shotgun and said that it should be subject to an individual certificate. Once again, the Government took the view that that was a wholly unjustified proposal.

The Opposition's approach to the matter was well summarised by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook on 26 October. He said: If youths in the inner cities are to be searched for knives, we cannot allow more prosperous adults to hang around country public houses with shotguns in the boots of their cars, or allow ammunition to be carried carelessly and pointlessly from place to place."—[Official Report, 26 October 1987; Vol. 121, c. 33.] That gives a flavour of the attitude adopted by the Labour party, and it is not good enough.

I said that I would refer briefly to the Labour party's position, because that was all that it merited. I have finished with Opposition Members; I have nothing more to say about them.