Meeting of the Parliament 25 June 2015
The misuse of air weapons is confined to a tiny minority of users, as recently published statistics on recorded crimes in Scotland involving firearms for 2013-14 have confirmed. On a side note, it is welcome that the Scottish Government finally changed its initial decision to withhold publication of this data until well after today’s debate.
A targeted response to the small number of crimes involving air weapons would be to focus on better enforcement of existing laws, but the bill instead imposes an extensive and costly licensing process upon users.
Furthermore, it is difficult to see how those provisions could be in the public’s best interests in terms of security, when Police Scotland’s already pressured resources could be invested instead in tackling crimes more prevalent than the 0.06 per cent of crimes that involve air weapons. The administration of air weapon licensing would involve a disproportionately large commitment of the police’s resources, as we heard from Alex Fergusson, which may threaten the public security achieved through police operations in other areas.
Those major concerns suggest that the bill does not adhere to the principles of targeted and effective government, a position that is reinforced by the provisions relating to the licensing of the taxi and private hire vehicle market. There are legitimate concerns that, in order to protect consumers, drivers of private hire vehicles should be required to have background checks and to understand the various needs of passengers. An appropriate solution would be to allow tests of only those things, yet the bill will also permit the knowledge test to be required of all private hire drivers, despite the availability of perfectly adequate satellite navigation.
That overreaching of the testing provisions, combined with licensing authorities’ power to refuse to grant a licence for a private hire vehicle solely on the grounds of overprovision, has the effect that the bill does not act in the public’s best interests. Experience elsewhere has indicated that an expanded supply of private hire vehicles would lower prices and, in doing so, allow more people to afford regular use of private transport. Such a development would clearly be in the public’s interest, yet the unnecessary testing provisions and anti-competitive ability to refuse licences on the grounds of overprovision would stand as barriers against that progress.