§ Mr. Fordasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will make a statement about the Firearms (Variation of Fees) Order 1976.
§ Mr. Merlyn ReesOn 26th August last I signed the Firearms (Variation of Fees) Order 1976, which, as the House will remember, increased with effect from 1st October 1976 the fees payable under Section 32 of the Firearms Act 1968. These are fees for the grant, renewal, replacement or variation of firearm and shotgun certificates.
The power to charge a fee for variation of a certificate is given by subsection (1) of Section 32 of the Act which—as originally enacted and as amended from time to time by order—has hitherto provided for a fee to be payable on any variation of a firearm certificate only where the effect is to increase the number of firearms to which it relates. Schedule 1 of the 1976 order, setting out Section 32(1) of the 1968 Act as amended by Article 4 of the order, referred only to variation of a firearm certificate and did not reproduce this necessary limitation.
As a result of this inadvertent omission, the order has been interpreted as not merely increasing the fee payable but also extending the requirement for payment of a fee to cover variations which do not increase the number of firearms to which a certificate relates. That was not the intention, and clearly the order should not have been made in this form. I must apologise to the House for making an order which was defective, a defect which also escaped the eagle eye of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
As soon as this matter was drawn to my Department's attention, a circular was issued to chief officers of police requesting them to charge a fee for the variation of a firearm certificate only in cases where the effect of the variation would be to increase the number of firearms covered by the certificate, and to refund any fees charged for variations not falling within that category. I hope 772W that this will have ensured that nobody will have suffered any financial loss. None the less, I repeat my apologies to the House for this unintentional transgression, which I much regret, and I have made a new order, which is being laid before the House today and will come into operation tomorrow, revoking the existing order and rectifying the position for the future.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland made a parallel order with the same defect. He would like to be associated with the regrets and apologies which I have expressed; and he is taking the same action as I am taking today.