COTERMINOUS PISTOL CLUB LICENCES AND RIFLE CLUB APPROVALS (Hansard, 4 December 1996)

§ Miss Widdecombe
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris)
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendments Nos. 96, 97, 112 and 113.
Amendment No. 57, in clause 14, page 7, line 4, after 'club', insert
'or a qualified range conducting officer'. Government amendments Nos. 114, 87, 88, 98, 99, 89 and 104.

§ Miss Widdecombe
I shall deal first with amendment No. 57 tabled by my hon. Friends, which I urge the House to resist. [Interruption.] I cannot support the amendment, which is unnecessary.
Clause 14(1) allows the responsible officer of a licensed pistol club to have in his possession the small-calibre pistols belonging to the members of that club without holding a separate firearm certificate for them. The amendment would extend that exemption to any qualified range conducting officer, but clause 14(2) already allows other officers or members of a licensed pistol club to enjoy the same exemption from the certification requirement as the responsible officer if the chief officer of police for the area in which the premises are situated has given his written permission for them to do so.
That ensures that unrestricted access to small-calibre pistols at a licensed club is limited to the responsible officer or other persons who have been approved by the local chief police officer. We believe that is right to ensure that the safety of the public is safeguarded. We are not suggesting that range officers are not responsible people, but we believe that unrestricted access to pistols must be tightly controlled.
New clause 6 and amendments Nos. 87, 88 and 89 have been tabled in response to an undertaking that I gave in Committee to my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) in relation to licensed pistol clubs and approved rifle clubs. The amendments will improve the administrative procedures for dealing with the granting of licences and approvals for gun clubs.
New clause 6 provides for a lesser fee of £21 for grant or renewal of an approval for a rifle club when it is granted or renewed at the same time as a pistol club licence is granted to that club, or its pistol club licence is renewed, as the case may be. A lower fee is appropriate in those circumstances, because most of the 1109 checking that has to be undertaken by the police before the pistol club licence is granted or renewed will usually also suffice for the purposes of a rifle club approval. As a general rule, I believe the fee should be one quarter of the full rifle club approval fee, which is currently £84. The reduced fee will apply only where grant or renewal of the licence and approval take place at the same time.
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New clause 6 will also allow joint clubs—where both pistol and rifle target shooting activities take place—to have their licence and their approval run from the same date. Again, that will benefit the police, and it will also assist club officials.
Amendments Nos. 87 and 88 will allow the licence for a pistol club to run for a maximum period of six years, the same period as that of a rifle club approval. I must make it clear, however, that the Secretary of State will retain the power to revoke his approval for a rifle club at any time before the expiry of that period and he will also have the power to revoke the licence of a pistol club. Allowing pistol club licences and rifle club approvals to run conterminously will ease the administrative burden on the police by allowing them to undertake checks on those premises from where both types of club will operate at the same time. I hope that it will also ease the burdens on the clubs.
Amendment No. 98 is a consequential technical amendment to the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988. It would require a description of the pistols stored at a licensed club to be entered in that club's register. The list of items contained at clause 21(2) would be expanded to cover this important particular. Under the present wording, the description of the pistols could be caught only by the general paragraph (e) and would have to be covered by separate regulations. That course could be avoided by means of this minor amendment, which also emphasises the importance of the register containing accurate descriptions of each pistol.
Amendment No. 99 clarifies the matters in respect of which entries in the pistol register have to be made within 24 hours—when the pistol is first stored al the premises, or its subsequent removal from or return to those premises. Amendment No. 113 is merely a drafting change, intended to improve on the language of the Bill and to add to clarity.

§ Sir Jerry Wiggin
I apologise to my hon. Friend but, having spent a lifetime shooting, my hearing is not what it should be and there was also the noise of hon. Members departing. I think that she fully covered amendment No. 57, but I gather that she is not entirely enamoured of it. I hope that she will consider the practicalities of nominating an individual. I may have misunderstood her—I shall study her words with care—but I hope that she will be sympathetic to the practical problems of a small club, where, if someone were ill, a whole day could be wiped out. We are not asking for much, and I shall study my hon. Friend's remarks in the morning.