Violent Crime Reduction Bill

The noble Baroness chides me, and I accept the reprimand. What we are trying to say is that we believe that we are going in the right direction. The age at which these weapons can be acquired is being raised as part of the package, because the regime could be looser without the control to which the noble Baroness has referred. We believe that we have had some success in focusing on this issue, partly, I suspect, because we covered it in the 2003 Act, to which the noble Earl referred. In 2004–05, the number of air weapon crimes fell by some 14 per cent, and the number of injuries sustained as a result of the misuse of air weapons fell by some 37 per cent. But we are not complacent on the back of that success, because statistics tell us that there are some 12,000 crimes and more than 1,500 injuries as a result of the misuse of air weapons. We think that we can make some further impact by raising the age bar to 18. The noble Earl asked for evidence on that. Given that younger users of air weapons are probably less likely to be as responsible as older users of air weapons, that may well be where the misuse is more concentrated.