WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 2002

MR COLIN GREENWOOD

  40. Probably because most of them do not actually have to use the gun.
  (Mr Greenwood) In terms of protection, using guns is extremely rare. Producing it is rare. The National Rifle Association of America did a survey and they found that, in something like 49 out of 50 cases, merely producing the gun ended the situation. It might be fortunate that, in your case, you would not have hit the man anyhow, but the chances of you having to shoot it are remote as long as you have it. That really is the key.

  41. You mentioned this en passant just now but perhaps we can address the problem and get this on the record. Why are shotguns treated separately from other firearms in the 1968 Act? What practical difference does this distinction make both for the community and for the regulatory authorities because of course it is a distinction that does not happen in Northern Ireland?
  (Mr Greenwood) The reason is political and historical, not practical. There is a separate point in the way shotguns are used and the large number of people who need to have them. My own view is that there should be no difference in the testing of the person and in the assessing of the person. It should be one scheme for firearms and shotguns. However, the bureaucracy of the good reason and all the record keeping wastes an awful lot of time and achieves nothing. I have suggested that there should be a single certificate but, as happens in many other countries, you have categories of firearms. So you possess pistols as they are authorised one by one; you can have shotguns provided you notify the fact that you have them. It is a fairly simple system. You are right in saying that it is illogical to differentiate between the qualification of the individual. If he is not fit to have a shotgun, he is not fit to have a rifle and vice-versa.

  42. The Government have proposed increasing the duration of a firearms certificate in Northern Ireland from three years to five years to bring it into line with the practice in Great Britain. Is the process of grant and renewal of certificates in Great Britain effective and can you see any disadvantages in running the system on a five year as opposed to a three year cycle?
  (Mr Greenwood) I can tell you one disadvantage that needs to be watched and that is the "bulge". The Home Office increased certificate life from three years to five at a stroke, so police administration had two years with no renewals and then suddenly an enormous number of renewals. That process will take 10 to 15 years to work out. So, to have a Firearms Department set up to cater for the three years, then for two years there is a much lower demand and then you go back again to a higher demand is causing a lot of problems. In terms of certificate life, I think I go back to something that I said earlier. Certificate life assumes that a person will become criminal or go mad at regular three year intervals and that is not certain and the much more crucial is to have the monitoring of not just convictions but arrests and incidents. The man who murders his wife will have had half-a-dozen domestic disputes beforehand. There has been no system in England and Wales to communicate that fact to the Firearms Department. Fortunately, the fact that you have had an argument with your wife does not mean that they should refuse to renew a certificate or revoke it, but it is a piece in the jigsaw puzzle which I regard as more important than the renewal process. It is the continuous process of monitoring. I am not suggesting spying. What I am suggesting is that the police have the record of a domestic dispute. That should be linked into the firearms record and, if he has another domestic dispute next week and the week after that puts his wife in hospital, it is certainly time to withdraw the firearms certificate and not wait for the renewal.

  43. What do you think about the issue of providing temporary certificates to groups who might wish to pursue leisure shooting but have to borrow guns?
  (Mr Greenwood) It seems very, very cumbersome. The law in Britain is really rather silly. If my son and I go to a shoot, he can borrow a gun from the owner of the shoot and use it under his supervision but he cannot borrow a gun from me and use it under my supervision. I think it should be possible to frame legislation in such a way that it is possible to borrow a gun from a certificate owner and you can put an age and a length of certificate holding on the lender without holding a certificate. I would go a step further and make the lender absolutely liable for the behaviour of the borrower and that, I think, would be much better than the bureaucracy. It does not seem to have caused any problems since 1988 that I am aware of.

  44. We have been dealing with firearms certificates. We have discussed the issue of firearms certificates and their duration and you came up with the argument, in relation to Mr Beggs, that you felt that enforcement of a firearms certificate was the key.
  (Mr Greenwood) I simply meant enforcement of airguns.

  45. Did you feel that in relation to guns generally?
  (Mr Greenwood) The big stick for the holding of a firearms certificate or, in England, a shotgun certificate is the fact that almost any misdemeanour will result in revocation. Relatively minor misdemeanours result in revocation of the certificate. Yes, it is a form of enforcement and it is a very big stick because it means that the man loses everything, his sport, his possessions and so on.

  46. Earlier, you said that some people were convicted of robbery—
  (Mr Greenwood) I said there was no system.

  47. But still held firearms certificates.
  (Mr Greenwood) Yes, I said they could.

  48. This is not a matter of the legality in this situation but is a matter of—
  (Mr Greenwood) Once he has been convicted, it is illegal to possess a firearm, but the police have no system for CID to inform the Firearms Department. All this information is fed onto the police computer and it should automatically be fed out to the Firearms Department and it was not happening and still is not to some extent.

  49. Could you give us an indication as to how wide this problem is and maybe cases which you have come across in which there has been thought about enforcement not taking place.
  (Mr Greenwood) It has not been addressed in terms of police monitoring. It was addressed after Her Majesty's Inspectorate Constabulary brought it to notice, but then everybody had the computer systems in place and they seemed to be fairly slow at changing.

  50. Could you detail a little further what it is you think could be done because obviously it is a police matter rather than a matter of changes that are needed in the law in order to actually enforce the removal of certificate provisions that are already there and something in this direction that is going to be fruitful and it might be helpful to the Committee if you elaborate on it.
  (Mr Greenwood) I think what should happen is that every incident, not just conviction, every arrest and everything else, should be logged on the police operational computer. The police computer also has the list of firearm and shotgun certificate holders, so it should be fairly easy to put the two together and then tell the Firearms Department automatically. What has been happening is that it depends on the officer in the case remembering to go and tell them. The police in England and Wales are in the process of doing it. I cannot tell the Committee what stage they are at but, it having been brought to mind, they are slowing putting it right.

  51. Are these extra tasks for the police because we should remember that we are short of police numbers et cetera in Northern Ireland?
  (Mr Greenwood) It should not be anything extra; it is a matter of telling the computer what it has to do with the information.

  52. Presumably you feel that the time spent on that would not present the same problems to the police as the time they spend restricting the use of firearms?
  (Mr Greenwood) Yes. It would only be the time of the computer designer. Once that particular category of information is fed in, an effective system would send it automatically to the computer in the Firearms Department, so the officer concerned would have nothing to do with it, it would be done for him.

  53. What effect has the publication of the Home Office's Guidance had on the effectiveness of the licensing regime and the shooting community's understanding and acceptance of the system?
  (Mr Greenwood) Remarkable, I think. It has not worked in yet, but it has been very, very useful. It has been particularly useful because it was swept—that is the phrase the Home Office used—for Human Rights compliance. `Swept for Human Rights compliance' is the phrase!

  54. A nice phrase, thank you very much!
  (Mr Greenwood) It has been useful. I have not heard the police complaining about it because it has given them a framework in which to operate. In the 1995 Inspectorate Report was a very condemning criticism of the police in England and Wales where it was said that firearms officers were inventing their own procedures and restrictions which had no basis in law or logic. That is not a verbatim quote. It is getting rid of that as well and the fact that it is published means that anybody can go to it and look at it. I dealt with a matter recently where the police tried to revoke a dealer's licence the same day. The Home Office Guidance says that he should be given 21 days, in order that he can make representations and say, "You should not take my business off me." All those procedures are set out in quite detailed form and, so far, it has been very helpful. The Home Office insist that they are going to be flexible. We do not know what Home Office flexibility is, but ...

  55. Not a word commonly associated with them!
  (Mr Greenwood) The master copy, if you like, is going to be on the computer, so it can be amended from time to time. The website will say, "This has been amended at Paragraph . . ." so-and-so. Therefore, if there is some doubt, you can call up the latest copy. I think it has been first class.

  56. I asked the question because the Government suggested it could produce similar guidance in Northern Ireland following the current review. Do you think there are any lessons that could be learned, so that the Northern Ireland ...?
  (Mr Greenwood) In terms of the guidance, I think the Home Office is a good model.

  57. A good model?
  (Mr Greenwood) Yes.

  58. You do not think there are any lessons to be learned from that that might improve it for Northern Ireland?
  (Mr Greenwood) It is relatively recently published. We keep finding parts that we are not so happy with, but then, if they are going to be flexible, you would expect that in a document of that size.

  59. I apologise for being late; I was at another meeting. Mr Greenwood, what gun clubs and associated organisations are you a member of?
  (Mr Greenwood) I am a member of a little rifle club in my own home town and I am a member of the clay pigeon shooting club there. I am a member of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation because they provide excellent insurance. It is not a club but I shoot in the pheasant season. I am retained by an organisation called the Shooting Sports Trust as their researcher and adviser. I have a small collection of firearms. So, firearms are my primary interest and firearms feed me and my wife. So, yes, I am heavily involved in firearms.