Contribution
It remains a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Again, I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on bringing forward the debate. Further down the Thames from the idyllic picture that he has portrayed of his constituency of Spelthorne, my constituency sits at the mouth of the Thames, and we have all the same problems.
This is very much an issue of rural crime and animals being brutally injured and maimed. It is causing a large amount of fear, aggravation and disgust for a lot of people living in the villages around Sittingbourne and Sheerness. It is also a problem in the towns. The issue actually first came to my attention in Sittingbourne, where our local church hall was smashed up with catapults. We have had shops smashed with catapults, as well as other churches. Indeed, when we were mustering for the Remembrance parade on Remembrance Sunday this year, on the night before, we could see that a whole load of empty flats above the high street had been smashed with catapults. So it is an urban issue as well.
Some of what is driving the problem is shops that are recklessly selling catapults on the high street in town as an easy inducement for local kids to take them up, with no checks or controls over them. As I am sure hon. Members are aware, catapults can be fun. They are seen as a child’s toy, but they are not a child’s toy when what is being shot out of them are enormous, weighty ball bearings. I have held some of the ones that our local farmers have handed to me; they are bigger than the end of my thumb. Such a shot going at high velocity through an animal, or God forbid, a human skull could easily be fatal. We have to be very aware that this is not just an issue of maiming animals and property damage; at some point, this could easily become a human fatality. It is something that we really have to attend to.
From speaking to the police, I know that they have come up with similar solutions. Some police are more assertive at being able to seize catapults from children they think are offending. Where this has hit the blocks is if the person is carrying a catapult in one pocket and a shot in another. The shot can be ball bearings or even pebbles. Once they have dropped them on the ground, there is no indication that they were carrying the catapult with any form of ammunition. Also, there is a real feeling that the police do not quite have the powers needed.
I have spoken to the National Farmers Union and to ASB Help to work out some options and ways forward. I strongly congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne on bringing another option to the table. One option that I have been looking at with the NFU is simply scheduling catapults as an offensive weapon. Other options include some sort of licensing scheme, which seems rather complicated, although it might be something we need to move towards if we cannot make this work in any other way. I have talked to police on the ground, particularly those in the fantastic neighbourhood policing team that has just started in Sittingbourne, and they think that catapults being an offensive weapon will help enormously.
We really need to get to grips with this issue, so the mysterious meeting that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) and I apparently had with Ministers was really an attempt to bring the issue to the Government’s table and to make sure that its seriousness was properly assessed. Some may have seen that in the south-east of England, the BBC has done some really good investigative journalism on this issue. There have been fantastic if quite harrowing reports, with some really disturbing pictures. A lot of that had not really come to the Government’s table up to that point, so I commend the BBC team for that investigation. I am really glad that, during that discussion, Ministers told my hon. Friend and I that they would like to convene some experts around the table to look at what the best options are.
I recognise—this is important to remember—that there are legitimate uses of a catapult beyond the pages of The Beano. Anglers use catapults to fire bait into the water. Also, I had not been aware of this before, but I now know that there is competitive catapult shooting, which is absolutely fine. It is a good and laudable activity that fits very much with what was being discussed earlier in relation to the need for good options for young children to improve their motor skills and camaraderie. These are all good things. Catapults being an offensive weapon would not stop that happening, but we need to have discussions, with anglers and professional and amateur catapultists around the table, to make sure that there are no unintended consequences from any changes in the law.
This is a real problem in our towns and rural areas. It needs to be stopped before there are human fatalities. Also, the destruction of wildlife by catapults needs to be stopped immediately. I ask Ministers to update us on the plans to review this issue and to bring experts together. Like all the hon. Members attending this debate, I would very much like to be part of that.