HC Deb 12 May 1965 vol 712 cc637-40
Sir F. Soskice

I beg to move Amendment No. 6, in page 2, line 1, to leave out from "has" to "enters" in line 2 and to insert "a firearm with him".

This Clause was acutely discussed in Committee. The Government feel that there was force in an argument advanced by an hon. Member opposite and we desire to give effect to it. The Clause originally made it an offence for a person to trespass upon a building if he had on him a firearm and also ammunition for use in that firearm. It was not an offence unless he had both those things with him. There also had to be an absence of reasonable excuse. He had to be a trespasser without reasonable excuse. It was represented forcibly in argument that if we insisted upon the requirement that a person should have with him ammunition suitable for use in the firearm the Clause might lose a great deal of its effect.

We have to conceive of a marauder—a house-breaker or a burglar, or whoever he may be—who has broken into a building, finds himself surrounded and possibly at the risk of arrest, and who realises that he may be liable to a very severe penalty. If he is a lawyer—and many of these people are, perforce, incipient lawyers—he will throw away the ammunition in question.

If a person trespassed in a building and had no excuse for trespassing—if he could not say that he had gone there to rescue somebody, or to put out a fire, or something of the kind—and he had a firearm and the ammunition to go with it, and, in those circumstances, was committing a serious offence, it would be unfortunate if he could escape the consequences of that situation by divesting himself of the ammunition by throwing it out of a window or into a corner, where it might not be seen, or by disposing of it in one of many other possible ways.

It was represented in argument that if we included the words together with ammunition suitable for use in that firearm". the Clause would be robbed of a great deal of its efficacy. On reflection, it seems to us that that is a sound argument and we desire, if the House sees fit, to give effect to it. If the House agrees to the Amendment the offence will be one of trespassing without reasonable excuse on premises—a building, or somebody's house—while having a firearm in one's possession. If we conceive of a person who has a pistol in his pocket and has no excuse for going into somebody's house but has done so, it is reasonable that the law should say that he is committing an offence. A person must not go into another person's house carrying a firearm.

That is what the Clause provides, and we respectfully submit that the Clause is a good one which is improved by the omission of the words together with ammunition suitable for use in that firearm".

Mr. Sharples

We are grateful to the Home Secretary for accepting the proposal that we put forward in Committee. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has set forth the arguments very clearly, as they were put forward in Committee, and we are grateful to him for accepting our suggestion.

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine

I want to say how grateful I am to the Home Secretary for what he has said this evening about the way in which the offence is related to the gun and not to the question whether there is ammunition for the gun. In Committee, I had on Amendment down to the Home Secretary's new Clause, to have the words relating to ammunition deleted. I have just been looking at what the right hon. and learned Gentleman had to say on that occasion.

Although I was in no way grateful to him for what he then had to say, I must say how grateful I am to him for his taking a slightly different view today. I am not forgetting the courteous and helpful way in which the Joint Under-Secretary of State gave an undertaking that this would be done. As we rely so much on what the Under-Secretary says in these matters, I was happy to withdraw the Amendment. We have seen the result today and I am grateful to the Minister.

Amendment agreed to.

Sir F. Soskice

I beg to move Amendment No. 7, in page 2, line 8, to leave out from the beginning to "air" in line 9 and to insert unless the firearm is an". This Amendment is consequential on the last Amendment to which the House has just agreed. The Clause as it stands, draws a distinction between the case in which the weapon concerned is an unloaded shotgun or an air weapon on the one hand—and in that case prescribes an offence which is much less serious, be- cause the weapon is less formidable and the offence is punishable only on summary conviction—and the case in which the weapon in question is of a more dangerous and sinister type. The effect of leaving out the requirement that the wrongdoer should have with him ammunition logically involves that one should leave out the distinction between a loaded and an unloaded shotgun. The Amendment simply does that.

The result of accepting the Amendment will be that the less serious offence is the offence in which the weapon concerned is a weapon, such as an air weapon, which is less savage in its potentialities than the others. We seek to make the Amendment in order to eliminate from the Clause what in its unamended form would be a somewhat illogical situation.

Mr. Sharples

We had a lot of discussion during the Committee stage about the kind of weapon which should be differentiated. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has now made the right differentiation. I think there is a case for making a differentiation between an air weapon and other weapons. We disputed the difference between the shotgun and other firearms, and this Amendment has put that right.

Amendment agreed to.