Offensive Weapons Bill (Second sitting)

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Tulip Siddiq]

Q Why is it different from the rest of the country? Firearm offences in London are the highest per head of population. I am curious to know why that statistic exists.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: We tend to see the metropolitan forces as the main ones having gun crime problems. It is a complex issue. I know from my previous role, before I was head of NABIS, having run the communities against guns, gangs and knives programme, that it is very complex and is a serious violence issue. Guns are just one factor.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Q I want to draw back slightly to the discussion about bump stocks. The example given was the Las Vegas shooting, but how many of those weapons used would have been lawful here? One of the issues in the United States is the pairing up of assault weaponry that is lawful there—unbelievably, quite bluntly—with bump stocks to make fully automatic assault weapons. How many of those weapons, given that the NCA evidence cites that incident, would have been legal here?

Also, do you think the definition in the law is drawn tightly enough? Clearly, bump stocks are being developed to get round the law on automatic weaponry in the United States and here. Do you think the definition is tight enough to prevent some sort of modification that has the same effect as the bump stock, but is not a bump stock?

Christopher Lynn: To answer your questions chronologically, because of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which prohibited full-bore self-loading rifles, the impact in the UK is limited, although we still have .22 rimfire self-loading rifles on section 1 firearm certificates. We are aware of at least two designs of bump stocks in the States that would be compatible with certain patterns of .22 rimfire self-loading rifles that are legal here, so there is some carry over, although it is very much more limited.

In terms of definitions, I was involved in a definition, and we went to the Patent Office to try to identify how the items were patented and described in the patenting, but it is always a competition on the wording. You think you have wording that is robust, and then there are some other means of getting around that. I have spent 23 years in the firearms world and throughout that time it has always been a competition of exploring the letter of the law and sometimes undermining the spirit of the law.

[Kevin Foster]

Q Do you think the wording in the Bill is the best it could be in this area, or could it be sharpened to try and future-proof it?

Christopher Lynn: We have consulted quite widely on it—the National Firearms Centre—and there has been a lot of input around it. I am sure we would be willing to have any suggestions that could be addressed, but I am not sure that there is an absolute gold standard catch-all. That is my position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

Q On age verification, you mentioned in your submission that you would prefer some explicit guidance on exactly what kind of age verification tools your members should use online. Do you want to be dictated to about which age verification tools to use, or do you just want guidance about what kind of tests that age verification tool should meet?

Graham Wynn: Ideally, we would like to see some standards, so we can be sure that online age verification systems developed by businesses such as Yoti and others will be accepted as due diligence by the enforcers. Currently, the systems for offline are fairly standard and obvious for face-to-face, but it has always been somewhat difficult to be sure that you are really complying with the online ones. You might think that the credit card companies could have done something about it, but they refuse to put an identifier on their cards to give an indication, so other means are necessary.

Technologically, things are developing, and I understand that, for some things, such as the pornography legislation that has recently gone through, there has to be some online verification. Perhaps that is slightly less dangerous than a knife sale, but nevertheless it would be useful for retailers to be sure that the system they are using meets certain standards. Of course, more will develop over time as technology advances.

[Kevin Foster]

Q Earlier, we were discussing the issue of what age should be set, and 18 was proposed. Do you see any issues for your retailers and members if there was a different age? I think we can say that it would not be under 18, but let us say 21 for the sake of argument.

Graham Wynn: The difficulty is that most age restrictions are at 18, although not all, so in store, people use challenge 25 to try to capture it. Some still use 21, but most use 25, so you can see roughly whether a person is likely to be 18 or not—it gives a margin of error. If you start to have a wider range of ages, it becomes a matter of training for the shop assistant in the store, and training becomes more difficult because there is quite a high turnover of shop assistants. The ideal is to try to keep things roughly in the same area.

[Kevin Foster]

Q Do you see 18 as the optimum, given so many other things are at 18?

Vin Vara: At BIRA we recommend challenge 25, but most of our members are looking at 21 years old.

[Kevin Foster]

Q Just to be clear though, challenge 25 means that if you look under 25, I will ask for your ID to see whether you are 18; it is not about being 25.

Vin Vara: From the ID you can work out their age. We say that 21 is a good age to challenge and to make as law, but the problem is that not all our members have the tools to verify—they do not have the ecosystems to challenge when you scan the barcodes. They still use the old tills. They and their staff need to be better trained on selling, which we are doing at the moment.

[Tulip Siddiq]

Q Mr Wynn, you mentioned age verification and how the face-to-face encounter is more obvious. Which is the acceptable form of identification for retailers when they check age? In my experience of speaking to small businesses in my local area, there is a real challenge with fake IDs and what is an acceptable form of identification. If someone presents an international driving licence that states that they are the right age, sometimes a retailer will be forced to accept that, but a lot of those have turned out to be fake in the long run. Do you feel the legislation around that is strong? Do you feel like things need to be changed and that the acceptable form of identification needs to be dictated more strongly?

Vin Vara: Most people will produce a driving licence or a provisional licence, or young people will bring in a passport copy. There are not many other forms of ID. They bring bank and credit cards, but they do not verify their age, so we will tell members not to accept them. Something with a photo ID, date of birth and probably an address on it would help, but we need to standardise it. There are so many different types and, as you say, there are a lot of fakes out there.