Sarah Jones

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) on an excellent introduction to what has been an excellent debate. It has been measured and thoughtful, and I thank Members from across the House for an informative and useful debate. I hope that it does justice to the number of people who signed the petition and are looking to this place and rightfully asking us questions. We have heard a lot of points made in different ways, but which are actually quite similar, and I want to reflect on those. The starting point is that nobody in this House is minded to get in the way of safety. As the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) said, nobody in this place wants to do anything that will harm more people or that will do anything to increase the number of people who are killed through the use of firearms. That is clear—and has been very clear from everybody who has spoken. Another point that has been very clearly made is that when looking at the potential changes that we are consulting on, we need to balance quite a lot of different aspects. First, there is the basic principle of freedoms versus responsibilities. There is also the bureaucratic burden of changing the licensing system versus the economic necessity and benefit that the use of shotguns brings—Members have talked about that in many different ways throughout this debate. We have heard powerful facts from BASC, the Countryside Alliance and others on the economic benefit of shooting. I think that the wider economic benefit is £9.3 billion—although the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley said £3.9 billion—and there are tens of thousands of jobs as well. The need to strike the right balance has been a powerful message, which I have very much heard. Finally on the principles on which we can all agree, everybody would say that we need to think about this in terms of responsibilities and a common-sense approach instead of ideology. We need to get this right, and I have heard that loud and clear. Some Members talked about how their constituents perceive a lack of understanding of rural communities from the Government. As Members would expect me to, I reject that. Someone could think that I, as an MP from Croydon, do not know much about shooting, and they would not be wrong. I have been clay pigeon shooting, but that is the extent of my knowledge. There are, however, people in my constituency who have signed the petition, and the benefit of my position is that I have access to a huge array of experts, colleagues from across the House, organisations and others who can educate and inform me. It is my business to be educated and informed on these issues.