Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved Amendment No. 146A:"After Clause 42, insert the following new clause—" ““POWER TO SEARCH FOR FIREARMS If a police constable has reason to believe that a person or persons in a particular area may be carrying firearms, he may arrange— (a)   for the area to be sealed off; and (b)   for the searching for firearms of any people or vehicles in that area, by whatever means he considers appropriate.”” The noble Lord said: A few minutes ago, we were discussing an amendment tabled by the Government to prevent people aged between 16 and 18 buying kitchen knives, chisels and other such things. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, rightly described it as a futile proposal. We hope that we will come back to it later on. My amendment is intended to widen the powers of the police to intercept illegal guns in public places before they can be used. It is a wholly practical amendment, and I make no apology for the fact that I moved the same amendment in March 2002, when I put forward the need to deal with growing gun crime in the United Kingdom. At that time, the Government did not accept my amendment. They said that there were already powers under the Terrorism Act to intercept weapons—of course, I was not talking about the Terrorism Act—and that this was not something that had been thought of in the Home Office and was not the sort of thing they wanted to do. Things have changed a lot in the past four years, and they have changed for the worse. Four years ago, I referred to New York where 90,000 guns had been seized from the streets between 1995 and 2002. Between 1995 and 2005, murder in New York fell by 54 per cent, from 1,181 people murdered to 540 last year. Robbery has fallen by 59 per cent, from 60,000 robberies to 24,000 robberies. New York is by no means perfect, but it is a much safer place than it was and the authorities in New York and in other cities in the United States are focusing on how they can reduce gun crime. Things are very different in the UK. From 1995 to 2004–05, offences involving firearms rose from 13,000 to 23,000—an increase of 77 per cent. The public’s perception is that it is much worse than that, and with that goes public fear. Many people in some of our inner cities who read in the press accounts of gun crime or hear about it are very worried. Very often, it is criminals shooting at criminals, but that does not make them any easier or any happier. Public outrage at the increase in gun culture has increased, and there is growing demand for action. Gun culture when imported into this country from overseas is wholly unacceptable, but it is growing. It must be stopped, and I believe the growth, at least, can be stopped. My proposal is simple. It is that the police should have full powers, as and when they think it appropriate, to use non-invasive methods—that is, metal detectors that will detect any gun because virtually every gun is made of metal—anywhere they wish. They can intercept the guns. It is easy to do, and it is absurd that they do not have the power to do so. When we discussed this four years ago, I found it a little depressing that the noble Lord, Lord Condon, while welcoming the idea, said the following, which I hope is no longer the case:"““The police are concerned that there may not be strong and sufficient partnerships within communities for condemnation of gun crime to lead to a willingness to give evidence against known carriers of guns within communities. That is linked to perhaps an absence of police confidence at present in their abilities to carry out stop and search in certain circumstances in certain areas””.—[Official Report, 12/3/02; col. 699.]" I hope that that has changed. I believe that the growth of gun crime means that there is now much more community support for this in the inner cities among the sort of people who live among the criminals who commit the crimes. They may find it difficult to denounce people or to report them, but I do not believe that they would find it in the least bit offensive, any more than any of us would, to be stopped in any street or place and frisked with a metal detector to see whether we carrying a gun. The detection system would also pick up knives, which would be an added bonus, but that is not the object of the exercise. The object of the exercise is that when the police constable—or police officer of whatever rank is regarded as appropriate—has reason to believe that there are guns in the area, the police can mount an operation to search for them. Recently in London, I think under Operation Trident, a lot of progress has been made in checking people for knives at Underground stations. All I am asking is that the Bill should give the police wide powers that they could use at their discretion to use modern methods to intercept guns that may be being carried illegally—they almost certainly are being carried illegally—in public places. Given the changes that have taken place, I hope that four years after the Government pooh-poohed my idea and rejected it I shall get a more positive reaction. I beg to move.