Clause 11 — Air weapons

Part of Scotland Bill – in the House of Commons at 7:45 pm on 7 March 2011.

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Photo of Michael Connarty Michael Connarty Labour, Linlithgow and East Falkirk 7:45, 7 March 2011

I approach the issue from a slightly different position. I support clause 11, because it is sensible to route such decisions to the Scottish Government, and amendments 17 and 18, which I hope the Government will take on board. Strangely, in a Committee of the whole House, Members do not necessarily receive from the Government the moderate responses that they would if they were in Committee off the Floor of the House and outwith the view of the television cameras. Often, Ministers see the sense in amendments and accept them, but this is a much more public arena, so we might not get from the Government Front Bencher tonight the sensible response that we would have had if we had been off the Floor of the House. That is one of the problems of this theatre, as some people regard the Chamber.

I have had to handle many matters to do with guns—to do with normal firearms—because there is quite a large shooting fraternity in my constituency. My constituency is mostly urban, but it has a rural hinterland where people shoot in clubs, to get rid of vermin, which is what farmers consider rabbits to be, and they go further north to shoot deer. It is an urban environment, and with reference to the remarks of my good Friend Cathy Jamieson, strangely, where somebody lives does not necessarily determine whether it is right for them to have a weapon of any kind; the question is what they are going to use it for, whether it is properly secured and whether they are properly licensed, controlled and monitored by the police.

I hope that in this Bill we are giving to the Scottish Parliament the power to think about—in keeping the whole thing in perspective—what I would call regulation rather than prohibition. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown is partly concerned by the idea, whipped up by whomever, for whatever reasons and with the aid of whatever quality press, that we are talking about—and we do use the phrase—a ban on airguns in Scotland. I hope that that is not the case, and we are not talking about someone running such a campaign.

The problem with prohibition, which was very well exhibited in the USA when they tried to ban alcoholic drink, is that the banned item just goes underground. In that situation, weapons would not only be used but traded, and unfortunately a large number of illicit users might misuse them, so I hope that the Scottish Government are sensibly thinking about a regulatory regime for air weapons. People say that a licensing scheme will cost so much money that it will be easier or, certainly, cheaper to introduce a ban, but I hope that in Scotland there is a sense of perspective, so that the issue, when it is transferred, will be about regulation, not prohibition.

That is not at all to diminish the serious effects of the deranged misuse of such weapons. Dr Whiteford was right to point out that a lot of damage is done by misuse, particularly to domestic animals in our communities. I am sure that it does not happen just in communities in Scotland, either, and that the hon. Member for The Cotswolds did not mean to smear the good name of urban communities in Scotland, because we know of the terrible catalogue of murders by people using guns—firearms, not airguns—in England. I am sure that airguns are misused a lot in communities in England.