Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I shall be brief. I am conscious that other hon. Members have served in Committee and been present all day waiting to be called. I should like to concentrate on gun crime and especially knife crime. Knife crime is a menace in every community that we serve. In my experience in the west of Scotland, knife crime is reported with alarming regularity in all our newspapers almost daily. If any independent testimony were needed to verify the frightening use of knives in our towns and cities, police and hospital staff could give chapter and verse. Hon. Members would be horrified at the extent of knife crime in the west of Scotland, not only at weekends but every day of the week. History and experience of knife crime becomes crucial evidence for toughening existing laws. That is why I fully support the Bill and raising the minimum age at which a young person can carry a knife from 16 to 18. I should also like to pay tribute to Strathclyde police, who are a force to be reckoned with. They deal very severely with knife crime. They have seen at first hand the way in which the gun and knife cultures have grown in the west of Scotland in the past 20 years, resulting in knives, blades, swords and Stanley knives becoming the weapons of choice among the gangsters and criminals. Anyone who has spoken to members of their local hospital staff will understand the problem that they, too, face in regard to health and safety. The country would be facing an increase in murders of tidal-wave proportions if it were not for the tremendous skill and professionalism of our surgeons and nursing staff. I want to talk briefly about amnesties. Looking round the Chamber, I imagine that, with one or two exceptions, I am probably the only one here who will remember the amnesty in the early ’70s led by the late Frankie Vaughan. He organised a very successful amnesty in the streets and housing estates of Glasgow. Some of our modern celebrities could go a long way if they were able to do the same thing. A frightening development in gun crime has been the conversion and modification of imitation guns so that they can fire live ammunition, in which there has been a 66 per cent. increase in the 12 months up to this year. I have said that no area is exempt or excluded from the threat of gun crime. However, if further proof is needed, last week in a neighbouring constituency to mine in Renfrewshire, the police raided a flat and removed a 12-bore pump-action shotgun, a bolt-action .22–250 rifle, a 12-bore single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a converted replica pistol, and 98 bulleted cartridges. I hope that this legislation will enable the police to do even more to get guns and knives off our streets.