argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): If I understand the noble Lord’s question, he is asking whether guidance is less likely to make people abide by the law and why we do not just put it in the Bill. I am struggling to answer that question.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I stick by the point that people will use the list in the Bill to try to get around the law, and therefore guidance is helpful. It is helpful both to the retailers who will be selling items but also to the courts in interpreting the legislation. Of course, the difficulty in this legislation is that knives have myriad uses, which in many ways is why this has been quite a difficult Bill to take through.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): It comes back to the noble Baroness’s point about consultation. In developing the guidance, we must and will engage with business and organisations such as the BRC. The intention is that it will be developed with them. We could have a circular argument here about whether things should be directly specified in the Bill or how helpful the guidance will be in helping retailers and the criminal justice system, but guidance generally will help the Government keep pace with developments Amendment 86 is similar to Amendment 81 and again seeks to require the Secretary of State to issue guidance. We have already debated government Amendment 106, which will enable the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Justice Department to issue statutory guidance on certain parts of the Bill, including those dealing with offences of remote sale and delivery of knives. We intend that there should be guidance to retailers on what items are prohibited from dispatch to residential premises or a locker under Clause 18. I think the government amendment is adequate to cover this.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think that John Lewis currently delivers table knives or any type of bladed products to residential premises. As it stands, John Lewis does not deliver knives; people have to pick them up or buy them in the shop I appreciate the noble Lord’s point about table knives. That is why this legislation is difficult. In many ways it will be for the courts to determine in what context the knife is being used. I am not denying what the noble Lord says.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we are not missing the point: we are trying to get a balance between people selling products which can be used for perfectly legitimate purposes and those seeking to abuse these products in order to do harm to people. One of the attacks at the weekend took place round the corner from me. I fully have in mind the danger that knives can cause but we are trying to get the balance right.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate the difficulties the Government are having in trying to get this clause right. I go back to the first amendment we debated today and the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I that we are disadvantaging British sellers relative to overseas sellers for no advantage to the peace of the realm. If someone wants to get a knife, all they have to do is order it from Holland and then it can be delivered to their house. It really matters whether we focus this prohibition on British sellers widely or narrowly, and the way the clause is drawn at the moment is capable of wide interpretation The guidance will have to be good and clear. I agree that it will not have the force of the law but it will have an effect on police officers, I hope, in deciding whether to launch a complaint or a prosecution. It will have an effect on the CPS, and it will certainly have an effect if it is reported in a newspaper that there has been a prosecution. It will be the prosecution that is laughed at, rather than the retailer condemned, if the guidance makes it clear that something should be allowed. It matters in relation to large items such as food processors; if they and all the rest of one’s wedding gifts cannot be delivered to one’s home address, people will go somewhere else, which would be abroad. It is a big enough item to make such a decision about and it is not obvious why it should be prohibited, whereas we can all accept that we should have to jump through a few hoops when obtaining a knife because they are dangerous and we must behave ourselves. I hope that the Government will draft the guidance with the interests of British traders at heart. I am grateful for my noble friend’s reply and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, if we are going to have this arrangement whereby overseas sellers are advantaged, at least we need to make it effective. At the moment, if I was to go on to a foreign website and order a flick knife that was then dropped into the post, it could come straight to me. Such a prohibited weapon could come to me if I was 14 years old. Nothing in the process would allow it to be intercepted. There is an arrangement in the Bill for overseas sellers who choose to use a contracted delivery arrangement in the UK, which would presumably apply to Amazon fulfilment or a similar arrangement, whereby age verification would take place on the doorstep. However, we are allowing an enormous hole to appear: if someone uses a common carrier such as the Post Office, there is nothing to stop a product ordered overseas being delivered straight to a minor at a residential address. If there is to be this enormous disadvantage on British businesses, let us at least have effective controls on overseas websites When goods come into this country, they are, by and large, inspected. We are concerned about people shipping pistols into this country and keep an eye out for such packages. The same techniques will be effective against bladed products. However, if someone involved in that process discovers a bladed product in a standard, unmarked pack, it is currently unclear whether they have a right to do anything about it. If we are to allow knives to arrive in unmarked standard postal packages, it would defeat the whole purpose of a great chunk of the Bill. To stop that happening it should be clear that when something is identified as a bladed product, and the arrangements for making sure that it will be signed for by an adult on delivery have not been complied with, the authorities must be able to confiscate that product, or the Bill does not work. I beg to move.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for his intervention. I was not making a glib comment about a trawl; regarding the examples of card companies and delivery companies, we are taking action where we can, but I acknowledge, as I have all the way through the Bill, that we are trying to find the right balance. It is not absolutely perfect, but we are using everything in our armoury to help us guard against the sale of knives to those aged under 18.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I entirely accept the strictures that the Minister has discussed concerning the wording and theme of my amendment but, as has been shown in this discussion, its substance remains. If we allow the Bill through as it is, it will quickly become known that there are one or two sites, not far away, across a little bit of water, to which anyone with criminal intent can go in complete safety, buy any knife they want, and have it delivered to them at home. Therefore, anyone intent on getting a knife for criminal purposes will be able to do so with total disregard for the rest of the Bill. All we will have succeeded in doing is disadvantaging British sellers; the Bill will have no other effect We do not need to achieve perfection; we just need to make dangerous the process of illegally ordering a knife overseas, or of ordering a knife overseas and having it delivered to someone underage. We need to make it something that might well go wrong: either the knife might be confiscated, or the people involved in selling it—who presumably have a lot of legitimate business as well as supplying to criminals—might lose everything through being put on the Home Office blacklist. As has been suggested by several noble Lords, this is proving an effective system in pornography. Those we allow to dominate the market in the UK, because they do proper age-verification, want to keep others out, so they become an effective police force that we do not have to pay for. There are other routes to getting there, which make the whole business of buying from an overseas supplier more difficult and chancy If we want an effective Bill—I join the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in saying that we absolutely do—we must urge the Government to use the time between Report and Third Reading to talk to their colleagues in DCMS and look again at whether this is a loophole they can close. Without that, we will have a Bill that is much less effective at achieving what we want it to achieve. But I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, Clauses 28 and 37 to 39 make provision for payments to be made to owners of offensive weapons, firearms, bump stocks and ancillary equipment, who will be required to surrender these items to the police by virtue of them being prohibited by the Bill. The purpose of Amendments 93, 98, 100 and 102 is to widen the regulation-making powers as drafted in these clauses so as to allow the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, as the case may be, to set the amount of compensation that will be paid to each claimant. This will be necessary for claims to be settled, given that the amount paid out will be based on the evidence of the value of the weapon provided by the claimant We believe that this is the right approach, given that the value of individual surrendered items will vary greatly and it would not, therefore, be equitable to the owners or in the interests of the public purse for the regulations to specify a fixed amount of compensation for each type of item made unlawful by the Bill. I remind noble Lords that the compensation regulations, which we have published in draft, are subject to the affirmative procedure. Accordingly, they will need to be debated and approved by both Houses before they can come into force. Amendments 92, 97, 99 and 101 are minor drafting amendments. I beg to move.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): If I have followed the noble Baroness’s question correctly, there are two elements to this. First, there is an element of discretion around the need for the individual who is surrendering weapons to show documentary evidence that they are the legal owner, and that the weapons have been lawfully acquired. Secondly, there is a range of valuations that could be provided, including from an auction house or for insurance. My understanding is that there is an element of discretion in judging the validity of those.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, for returning us to the issue of high muzzle energy—HME—rifles with an explanation of his amendment. I want to point out that I have never opposed the proposed ban on MARS or lever-release rifles, as I am sure the noble Lord will recognise, although I have eased back on my opposition to the compensation arrangements for them Amendments 103A, 103B, 107A, 107B, 108A, 110A, 113A, 116 and 117 in this group are in my name. The first two are substantive; the rest are consequential. In Committee, my noble friend Lord Lucas and I suggested that we did not need to put these high muzzle energy, .50 calibre target rifles in Section 5 and thus prohibit them from general use. However, we need to make certain that they cannot fall into the wrong hands. We can achieve that by requiring the same levels of security currently applied to Section 5 firearms—those with no legitimate civilian use, such as self-loading rifles and automatic weapons, among others. My noble friend Lord Lucas mentioned level 3 security in his amendment while mine sought to give an order-making power to the Secretary of State to achieve much the same. In addition, my amendment provided for transport conditions.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has indicated, Amendments 95 and 96 would restore the prohibition on civilian access to high muzzle energy rifles, which was a feature of the Bill on its first introduction in the House of Commons. These rifles are currently available for civilian use or ownership under general firearms licensing arrangements administered by the police We discussed these amendments in Grand Committee, and the question of whether these particular rifles should be prohibited also received much scrutiny in the House of Commons. I hope therefore it will not be necessary for me to repeat all that I said in Grand Committee but, in the light of the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, it may assist your Lordships if I briefly reiterate the Government’s position.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in Grand Committee my noble friend and I had a discussion on this subject and he said that he would do his best to find me the evidence that the Government were working on that rifles that are targeted in this part of the Bill are capable of a higher rate of fire than ordinary target rifles. I have not received, as far as I can find out, anything from my noble friend My amendment is not intended to look at the process. After all, targeting only where the energy source is the gas from the firing of the previous cartridge leaves the possibility that a similar mechanism might be powered by electricity or clockwork. I think that the Government are saying that they do not want in common use rifles that are capable of a higher rate of fire than a standard bolt-action rifle. That seems reasonable, and if that is what the Government want to achieve, let us have legislation that achieves that and does not go at just the particular way a higher rate of fire—if there is indeed a higher rate of fire—is being achieved. That will allow us to develop a weapon that can be conveniently used by disabled people but which will be acceptable to the Government in the long term. That was very much why these weapons came into being. They were perfectly legally created but were adapted to the needs of particular shooters Let us have out in the clear, in legislation, that the basic thing that the Government want to avoid is fast-firing rifles. Let us ban them. Then something that does not have a higher rate of fire, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, can be allowed and created to meet need of these particular target shooters Under this subsection we are looking at a compensation payment of around £15 million, as far as I can discover, which is not enormous on the Grayling scale but is nevertheless a serious amount of money for the Government to focus on whether this is a justified expenditure or not. I would like to be sure that the rifles are being banned because they exceed a rate of fire that the Government find acceptable. If we are going to do it by the mechanism in this Bill because we have not got time to change anything else, let us at least see the evidence. What measurement of the rate of fire of these rifles have the Government made to justify spending £15 million? If that evidence is not immediately forthcoming, let us refocus on the underlying concern—the rate of fire. Let us make that the prohibited thing. That way, we can adapt to changes in technology as they come along and make sure that this bit of the Bill continues to achieve its intended effect into the future, and not just until someone finds another technological workaround. I beg to move.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, although this amendment refers to Clause 34, I have assumed for the purposes of my reply to my noble friend that he would like to apply the additional wording to Clause 33 as well, for consistency These clauses will prohibit civilian access to certain types of rapid-firing rifles, defined as, "any rifle with a chamber from which empty cartridge cases are extracted using … energy from propellant gas, or … energy imparted to a spring or other energy storage device by propellant gas" As has been made clear during previous stages of this Bill, the Government are concerned about the potential risk to public safety if these rifles were to fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals. At present, these rifles are available to target shooters who have obtained a firearms certificate from the police, for which they have been vetted. However, the police and National Crime Agency are concerned about the rate of fire of these rifles and consider that stricter controls are needed.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my noble friend. I am sure that that point will be taken on board by the clubs concerned and those who assist disabled shooters I do not think we can escape the fact that, were they to get hold of them, criminals or terrorists could cause more harm with this type of rifle than they ever could with a conventional one—acknowledging, of course, that all firearms are lethal and should be controlled. The Government are already satisfied, for the reasons that I have given, that these rapid-firing rifles meet the criteria that the amendment seeks to impose. For that reason, we think the additional wording is not required. I hope that on that basis my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, yes, of course I am going to withdraw my amendment but before I do, I again urge the Government to look at the harm that they are focused on rather than the mechanism by which that harm is delivered. If, as I think is entirely reasonable, the Government do not want rapid-firing rifles, why does the Bill not say that? Just because the energy from firing the previous shot is conveniently available—that is the way that these rifles work at present—does not mean that you could not create a rifle that worked off previously stored compressed gas, batteries, a wind-up clockwork mechanism or some other means of storing energy that would allow a round to be automatically loaded, or loaded with an interrupt mechanism, after the previous round had been fired In this legislation we seem to be dealing with the mechanism rather than the underlying problem. Surely, if we deal with the underlying problem, we will not get the situation arising again where a couple of designs of rifle have been allowed to be created—they have not grown up without permission—and have been sold, when, fundamentally, as my noble friend Lord Attlee has pointed out, we feel uncomfortable about self-loading rifles. We are not banning self-loading rifles here; we are banning one particular mechanism of self-loading. That seems short-sighted and not the best way of tackling the problem I would be really grateful if my noble friend the Minister could share the evidence that these particular rifles are in fact faster-loading than a bolt-action rifle, not so much because I am concerned about this particular case but because I would like to know that when it comes to making this sort of judgment in future we can look at and understand the basis on which the decision has been taken.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Charles Chetwynd-Talbot (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. The purpose of Amendment 103 is to place a duty on the Secretary of State to open a public discussion on proposals for the introduction of statutory firearms licensing guidance within three months of the Bill becoming an Act. I spoke about this matter at length at Second Reading and in Grand Committee, where I found considerable sympathy with my proposals, in particular the medical aspects of firearms licensing guidance. I do not intend to repeat those arguments, save to say that my proposals have widespread support from the police, the British Shooting Sports Council and the APPG for Shooting and Conservation. I understand that the suggestions agreed with the Home Office by these bodies some two years ago also have the Home Office’s support However noble its intentions, the Home Office is the cause of much frustration in the ranks of various stakeholders through its constant delaying—the answer to the introduction of the promised consultation varying between "soon", "shortly", and, indeed, "as soon as possible", as stated in my noble friend’s response to me in Grand Committee: "I have a partial answer for my noble friend. The consultation will be launched after Royal Assent, but I am sure that the spirit of that undertaking is as soon as possible after Royal Assent".—[Official Report, 6/2/19; col. GC 418.] I and many in the shooting organisations believe that the continuing delay is because the Home Office simply has yet to get its ducks in a row. Further delay is neither fair nor good enough. The amendment serves to enhance the safety of the public. I believe I have cross-party support on it. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Malcolm Sinclair (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I put my name to this amendment in Committee, but when I came to put my name to it on Report I found that three others had already done so. I hope my noble friend is impressed that support for the amendment is from not only the Cross Benches but the Back Benches of the Labour Party This is a hugely important amendment. I will not repeat what I said in Grand Committee, but I hope my noble friend will understand that the amendment is designed to enhance public safety. If it had been enacted before Dunblane I think some of the problems there would not have happened. Anybody who has access to the shotgun or rifle cabinet must be properly scrutinised. As my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury said, the Home Office is dragging its feet on this. We want it to hurry up. I hope my noble friend will ensure that my former department gets a move on and does this consultation extremely quickly.
Offensive Weapons Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, while I support my noble friend’s amendment, which I am sure is a good idea, I return to the issue of the old Firearms Consultative Committee, which fell into disuse. If that was still in operation, we would not have had the MARS lever action release problem and we would have saved £15 million in compensation, because I am sure that that committee would have nipped its development in the bud and saved an awful lot of money.