Lord Garnier (Con)

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to the amendment that my noble friend Lord Attlee spent about 15 seconds talking about; that is, his Amendment 414. At the outset of his remarks, I was worried that he might be positively going to support his own amendment, but he very quickly said that he hoped that the Minister would not accept it, and so do I. If one looks at the draft of Amendment 414, one sees that it is designed to allow chief officers of police to set and vary any fee payable for shotguns and firearms. It is not quite clear from the draft of the proposed new clause whether this would, if enacted, cover just England and Wales, or whether it would cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If the latter, that would be 45 separate chief officers of police who may well decide to set separate fees for each of the 45 police territorial areas; if it is only England and Wales, there would be 43, and that is bad enough. I declare an interest as a holder of a shotgun certificate. While I admire, in every possible way, the chief constable of my own police area, I do not wish him to have the ability to set the level of the firearm certificate fee. It is a tax, and if it is not a tax, it is a fee that should be set by one person who is accountable to Parliament; namely, the Secretary of State. I think I need to say no more, not least because my noble friend Lord Attlee encouraged me greatly by saying precisely very little about the amendment himself.