Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, as the only representative of the blue line present in your Lordships’ House today I would like to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. Successive Governments have regulated the legal use of firearms to the point where many believe that the legal owner is over-regulated. Yet society as a whole has steadily lost control of the illegal carrying and use of firearms, particularly over the past four or five years. The growth is obvious. I will not weary the House with the figures because they are a matter of record. Guns are carried as a fashion accessory, as many of us know. They are carried illegally to further a turf war, often driven by the drugs trade. One of the more worrying factors about the current growth of illegal firearms is the quite awesome power of the weapons concerned. The low-velocity revolvers and sawn-off shotguns of the old days, highly dangerous though those two weapons were and are, nowadays have far been surpassed by the growth of weapons used by criminal gangs. They include military weapons or weapons that use Parabellum ammunition, very high-velocity projectiles and often fully jacketed bullets, and often they are fully automatic weapons with a staggering rate of fire. Young people—they often are young—are in possession of those sorts of weapons, so a largely unarmed police force is facing a highly dangerous situation on the streets. In passing, it is worth noting that the majority of patrolling officers know that they could very well meet someone with that sort of weapon in their possession who has a desire to use it in order to evade arrest, and those officers are continuing to patrol our streets. An amendment such as that proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has my full support. It would give incredible courage and support to an overstretched police force; it would help to make our streets safer; and it would help to drive crime down.