Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I am grateful to the noble Earl and the noble Baroness for their comments. I shall pass on the fact that the noble Baroness believes that Hazel Blears is capable of lateral thinking. That is something that occurred to me a long time ago. I am also grateful that she thinks that we have a constructive frame of mind on this—we certainly have. If I needed any further reminding of that fact, my noble friend Lord Davies, who sits next to me on the Front Bench and who is a keen golfer, reminds me that vermin are indeed a problem on the periphery of many golf courses that he attends. Whether that is because he goes there or not, I am not sure; I doubt it. With this clause we are trying to close a gap in the law by making it an offence for a person of any age to fire an air weapon beyond the boundary of premises. As the noble Baroness has attested, concerns were expressed earlier in the passage of this Bill that the offence did not allow for circumstances where it would be legitimate to fire an air weapon beyond premises. At that stage, the only example given was where someone had permission to shoot vermin from the occupiers of adjoining land. The Government responded to those concerns by amending the Bill to include a defence where a person could show that they had the consent of the occupiers of each of the premises into or across which they fired. Given the very narrow range of instances where shooting beyond premises would be acceptable—golf courses included—we chose to address the point by including a defence rather than the sort of formulation proposed by the noble Earl in his amendments, which could go much wider. We have not subsequently been made aware of any legitimate activities that would not be covered by that defence, so we are not persuaded that anything more is required. I have heard what the noble Baroness said. I am not sure that I want to take this away for further consideration with a promise to bring forward an amendment, but if there are some real difficulties and unintended consequences, as she suggests, perhaps she and her colleagues would write to me, as I shall be interested to hear about them. As I said, we have not heard of any other legitimate activities that might not be covered by the defence, and it is for that reason that I am not prepared to consider the amendment. We believe that the phrase,"““without lawful authority or reasonable excuse””," is too imprecise. We have been willing to move on that issue. When circumstances show that it is legitimate to shoot beyond premises, there is this defence; but I do not want to make exemptions so wide as to undermine the overall purpose of the clause. That would be unfortunate in the extreme. However, we have accepted that there was an issue, and I think that the bit of lateral thinking that we have indulged in will probably be fit for purpose.