Ben Lake

I must concede that the DVLA was perhaps not the best of examples to cite. The right hon. Member is correct that the original Firearms Act—back in 1920, I believe—differentiated between the smooth barrel and the rifle for very good reasons. Others have touched upon that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan) elaborated on the point about the differentiation of lethality and effective range. Those are very important points that surely remain salient and key if the objective of this exercise is to ensure public safety. Leading on from that point, my concern is that, if we merge sections 1 and 2, we will have an already overwhelmed system where licence applications for less risky weapons fall to the bottom of the pile, with an impact on legal and lawful uses such as those in my constituency—whether for conservation, farming or sport—or, controversially, we might have a situation where the riskiest, most dangerous weapons also find themselves lost in an overwhelmed system, which is surely not what we want. That is one potential unintended consequence that we should be mindful about as legislators. For those reasons, I should like to urge caution and impress upon the Government that we need to be mindful of many unintended consequences, and that, rather than looking to embark on this very significant change, we might be better off first looking at ways of making the current regime work better. I commend to the Minister the idea of a centralised body—not like the DVLA—that could free up police resources to tackle illegal firearms and ownership. That would represent a far better way forward and achieve what I think we all want, which is to improve public safety.