Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Earl of Cork and Orrery and Viscount Goschen

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a brief intervention in this debate. I declare an interest as a holder of a firearms certificate and the owner of a number of rifles, none of which would come anywhere near the type of muzzle energy we are talking about.

I support the description of our firearms licensing regime given by my noble friend Lord Lucas. It is generally accepted internationally that the UK has one of the most rigorous and best informed firearms licensing regimes in the world. It is also generally accepted that the shooting community respects and understands that the holding of a firearms certificate is a privilege that can be removed. Because of that, they are a very law-abiding section of the community. They are acutely aware that their sport and activity can be curtailed should they be involved in criminal activity entirely unrelated to the use of their firearms.

With that in mind, we have to be a bit careful of banning things because they are an easy target—forgive the pun. It is easy to work out where a particular category of firearm is and remove it from circulation. I hold no particular candle for the .50 calibre rifle and I am open to arguments about where the line should be drawn, because one indeed has to be drawn somewhere. We have acted in the past regarding handguns, fully automatic weapons and a number of other eventualities, but I very much support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s contention that before we ban something we have to have a closely argued, coherent case that is evidence based. Just banning something because we feel like it or because it is easy to do should not be a proper course of action.

Debate on the Bill has, on the one hand, largely been about very large numbers of people carrying knives, often using them and being closely tied up with the criminal fraternity, particularly drug dealers. On the other hand, the Bill talks about banning the use of a piece of equipment that is legally held when no recorded crime has ever been committed using a legally held rifle of such high-muzzle energy, as far as I understand it. I am open to correction by my noble friend and other Members of the Committee. We have to be very careful about that. Where do we draw the line?

I quite accept what the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said: these are weapons of very high power and very high destructive capability. That is absolutely correct. On the other hand, their utility for criminals is much lower than that of many other sniper rifles. He described them as sniper rifles, and indeed they are. But they are not the typical sniper rifles used by the British Army, which are in calibres much closer to sporting rifles and are much smaller pieces of equipment. We have to put this in perspective and look at the actual threat.

When the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to what was worrying the Home Secretary about these rifles, it occurred to me to question whether he was worried about the theft of these 130 or so rifles, a tiny number, or about one of those firearm certificate holders turning bad. Or was it really about someone purchasing one of these—in America, for example—and turning it into a small number of machinery components, putting them in a container and smuggling them in, as a vast number of illegally held pistols arrive in this country. The real danger faced on the streets is from illegally held weapons, not legally held weapons.

[The Earl of Cork and Orrery]

My Lords, I will add a couple of points. It is very instructive to look up “sniper rifles” on Google because you get a huge list of them, the vast majority at 7.62 calibre not .50 calibre. It is also interesting to see that three of the most popular .50 calibre rifles are made in this country and well known globally as some of the most popular sniper rifles. There are currently believed to be 200 large- calibre rifles in the UK, which is not a very substantial number. The cost of acquiring one of these .50 calibre target rifles is also not cheap—about £20,000 for the whole package, so there are never going to be very many of them.

Another point, which has already been made, is that only one of these rifles has ever been stolen in this country and it was found shortly afterwards, dumped by the opportunist thief, who realised that there was absolutely nothing he could do with it. They weigh about 36 pounds, which means they are not exactly the easiest things to carry around, and are very substantial in length—a length from here to the end of the desk. So we are talking about a rare beast indeed.