Violent Crime Reduction Bill

An unlawful purpose would have to be involved. That is part of the definition. I do want to consider the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, because I want to be certain that there is no gap in the law and that the section 141A definition covers the circumstances that we want it to cover. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s amendment achieves that, because the definition would apply only if both section 139 and section 141A applied. Perhaps inadvertently, the hon. Gentleman has narrowed the definition rather than extending it. The hon. Gentleman said that if a person persuaded someone else to hide a weapon, the maximum sentence could be four years rather than two. In creating a ““minding”” offence, we sought to put the penalty at the higher end of penalties relating to knives, because we consider that a serious offence. It is not a mandatory minimum, as in the case of guns; it is a maximum sentence to give the courts discretion to establish where the offence might lie. I do not entirely accept that there is a contradiction, because we have genuinely tried to place such offences at the higher end of the scale. My reservation about the hon. Gentleman’s amendment is that I do not want to muddy the waters. I do not want to obscure the primary purpose of clause 24, which is to ensure that people do not seek to persuade others to conceal their weapons and thus evade prosecution and punishment. I do not want us to become so remote as to implicate what may be innocent articles that people have asked others to mind for them in innocent circumstances. We had a long debate in Committee about shotguns being left in the back of cars, and about whether that constituted inadvertence, negligence or recklessness. I do not want to repeat that debate now, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will look at his proposals again and consider whether there is a need for amendments to plug any gap that needs to be filled.