I am very familiar with what the hon. Gentleman has said. I am proud to have many friends who are reserves; they play a very important role in the armed forces. Crucially, they are properly trained and equipped, and work within a framework of accountability. That is exactly what has not been proposed—or at least spelled out—by the Government for volunteer PCSOs. That is precisely what we are seeking to draw out, and for that reason we will be voting against the Government’s proposals.
I will say one final thing on volunteering before I move on briefly to other provisions in the Bill. I return to what the NCVO has said; to be frank, it has captured our concern:
“The proposed approach to volunteering, through the creation of volunteer positions that are ‘equivalent’ to or ‘mirror’ paid roles, risks misunderstanding the nature of volunteering and the full contribution it can make. Rather than the language of equivalence
we hope the government will recognise this and start to reflect a language of distinctiveness and complementarity. This will help ensure a more successful police volunteering programme.”
The NCVO is absolutely right that the Government have, in this respect, simply got it wrong.
I turn now briefly to other issues dealt with in Committee by my formidable colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham. Our new clause 21 and amendments 7, 8 and 9 would help to ensure full cost recovery of the licensing of guns. That is a crucial objective of the Gun Control Network. It is also a goal that the Government profess that they wish to achieve. In Committee, the Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims told us:
“We are as one on the fact that the taxpayer should not subsidise licensing.”––[Official Report, Policing and Crime Public Bill Committee, 12 April 2016; c. 259.]
We will hold him to his words, and so look for an assurance on when the Government will move to full cost recovery. We note that some forces are already moving in that direction. It cannot be right that an overstretched police service that has lost 18,000 police officers and 5,000 PCSOs should have to subsidise gun licences, and we look forward to the Minister’s response on that. He says that the e-commerce scheme will deliver full cost recovery, but we will see. Are we moving to full cost recovery, and when will that be achieved?
5.15 pm
New clauses 7, 8 and 9 have been tabled by the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). New clause 7 would allow a gun licence to remain valid while the decision to renew a licence is undertaken, new clause 8 would allow rifle and pistol clubs to use more guns than they are currently allowed to use, and new clause 9 would increase the number of people who are able to lend shotguns. Those new clauses are in line with recommendations published by the Countryside Alliance in March 2016, but we are not in favour of them. We believe that tough laws on gun control are necessary, and that they work.
New clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), seeks to ensure that knives are not illegally sold over the internet to under-18s, and it has our full support. Indeed, we have strongly argued for precisely such a measure for some months, and we warmly welcome the hon. Gentleman’s new clause. Age verification for online sales poses great difficulties. We were all truly horrified—this was mentioned in a helpful discussion this morning—when we read about Bailey Gwynne, the teenager from Aberdeenshire who was stabbed to death in school by a knife that had been illegally sold online to a 16-year-old. When The Guardian investigated the story, it was able to have a knife similar to that used to kill Bailey Gwynne delivered by Amazon with no age verification. It was as simple as ordering the knife online and posting a note on the front door asking for the package to be dropped off without knocking. That is very similar to the way that the knife used to kill Bailey Gwynne was bought.
Like the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, who has given good leadership on this issue, we have consistently argued for a tightening of regulations on the sale of knives to young people—indeed, a campaign to that end is being led in the west midlands by the police and
crime commissioner to whom I referred earlier. We therefore welcome proposals to introduce additional age checks when knives are sold online. That is not easy to do in practice, but the principle is key and we hope that the Government will agree to the proposal. There is strong support across the House on this issue, and it would be a shame if one more child died as a consequence of that loophole. I am therefore confident that the whole House will unite in support of the proposed change to the law. It is much needed and not before time.