David Smith

As my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) said earlier, we need must base our decisions on evidence. That is why I welcome the fact that there is a consultation, but it should be a genuine consultation on the facts of the matter. Speaking of facts, I would expect every farmer in my constituency to own at least one shotgun, and that goes for all farmers and agricultural workers across the United Kingdom, of whom there may be up to 300,000. For all of them, as we have heard, shotguns are not a pastime but a necessary tool of their trade, much like a stethoscope, a power drill or a laptop. Farmers are responsible and sober shotgun owners because they are professionals. They know the damage that firearms can deliver, because they are required to use them so that we can eat our food. There is no evidence base to suggest that it is farmers or agricultural workers whom we need to be worried about. Impositions on farmers will not make us safer; they will just make people worse farmers, because they will spend more time securing the tools they need in order to do their job than doing it. Fundamentally, if we want food, they need shotguns. Incidentally, it should be no surprise that Northumbria police are the second worst police service in the country for firearm licensing processing times, because their remit covers thousands of farms. I have been assured by them that they are working on the situation, but there is a compelling case for the standardisation of firearms licensing, as we have heard, and I welcome that element being part of the proposed changes. There are a number of ways to secure an exemption, if that was how we wanted to do it, and to differentiate farmers and agricultural workers—those who need these tools of the trade to do their jobs. That could, for instance, include retaining section 2 for pest control; that could be the categorisation. Or we could simply keep section 2 for those who are clearly working as farmers and agricultural workers. Police forces are clever enough to make a common-sense call on whether an individual is a farmer—usually the tractor gives it away. Alternatively, other policy events have shown the need for a central register of active farmers. Increasingly, we need to distinguish who our farmers are.