Violent Crime Reduction Bill

Ms Abbott: We heard earlier speakers—experienced hunters and shooters—talk of the importance of seeking a balance between the activities of the law regarding a minority and the criminality that the clause is designed to address. It is right that we seek a balance, but I hope that my comments can pull the balance in a slightly different direction.

The important point to make to Opposition Members is that the type of gun crime that we see in the inner city is qualitatively different from that which we have seen in the British Isles since the second world war. People have always used guns to commit crime in this country, and there have always been professional armed robbers, but the gun crime that has emerged in inner London in the past 10 or 15 years is qualitatively different. It is gun crime as part of a lifestyle; it is about people who do not feel that they are dressed to go out for an evening at a nightclub if they do not have their weapon; it is about people who use guns in a way that professional criminals never did—to settle petty disputes that arise because someone has not let them into a nightclub, has been rude about their girlfriend or has brushed up against their new suit.

Members may think I exaggerate, but if Metropolitan police officers were here, they would describe shooting after shooting that was an example not simply of crime, but of so-called respect crimes, in which people were enforcing their status in their gang or community by using a gun. The tragic fact is that the majority of gun crime in London is not about crime at all, but about respect crimes. The gun culture, which glorifies the gun, is at the heart of such crimes. We are talking about something that is qualitatively different from what Britain has seen before.

When we talk about minding weapons, we are talking in many cases, as the Minister said, about people using children. In recent days, a big cache of weapons was found in a child’s bedroom in London. When someone uses a child to hide a weapon, it is not simply a question of their trying to conceal their criminal activity. What are they doing to that child? I represent a community in which young men see the man with the gold chain and the gun, or the man with ready money, as far more of a role model than any Member of Parliament or lawyer.

The clause is therefore important, not only because it aims to prevent people from concealing crime, but because it must be wrong that children are drawn into the gun culture at an early age by being used to mind guns so that people evade their sentences. The effect is greater than simply hiding crime: it draws children into a complicity with a culture that glorifies weapons. The amendments—probably tabled in good faith, as hon. Members do not understand my community any more than I understand theirs—would leave a gaping hole in the clause.

When we talk about intentionality, we have to remember that those gunmen, for reasons that I will touch on further as we progress, exercise tremendous fear over their communities. If the gunman says that he left the gun in the child’s bedroom unintentionally and the child says, “He left the gun in my bedroom unintentionally”, as does the mother, how will we prosecute?

Mr. Djanogly: I understand where the hon. Lady is coming from. I am certainly not speaking against the clause, and I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross is either. I think that she might like to reconsider her general approach to our comments. Yes, we have been talking about narrowing the clause, but she must appreciate that we are talking about a mandatory five-year sentence. Intention can come into it. Life is not a series of perfect situations.

Ms Abbott: We are indeed talking about a mandatory sentence. My hon. Friend the Minister explained how mandatory sentencing has had an effect on such crimes. I am afraid that if we bring intention into the clause, the people whom it is meant to target would evade prosecution by being able to frighten people into supporting them in saying, “It was all an accident; it was all a mistake. I did not know that it was in the kid’s bedroom. It was unintentional.”

Sammy Wilson: Does the hon. Lady accept that in the scene that she paints—with which I have total sympathy, especially as I have seen exactly the same excuse used in places in Northern Ireland—the gun is probably illegal anyhow and would therefore not be covered by the clause? Indeed, there would be other ways of dealing with that crime, because whether the gun was hidden intentionally or unintentionally, it should not have been in anyone’s possession since there was no firearms certificate for it.
 
Ms Abbott: That is perfectly true. However, the fact remains that the clause is designed to address, in my view, the increasing practice in the city of using children and girlfriends to mind guns. The Opposition amendments would leave unacceptable loopholes in the legislation. It is hard enough to bring such people to book, and we do not need legislation with loopholes in it. I oppose the amendments.

Hazel Blears: I do not think that I have anything to add to what I have said, and I ask for the amendment to be withdrawn. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington made an eloquent case.

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