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Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That case is more exceptional in that the barmaid was able to get the gun than in the fact that she was not prosecuted. The other way in which the Bill defeats its own object is that it encourages the setting of traps where people lie in wait for a burglar. Perhaps that is what the hon. Member for North Thanet has in mind in talking about how burglars should be confronted. There have been cases where people have been repeatedly burgled and it is a problem, but the answer is not the Bill and certainly not to set traps. I want to return to the risk of the escalation of violence if the burglar thinks that the householder is likely to have a firearm, knife, sword or other such weapon. In the last debate on this, there was a discussion of the merits of cricket bats and baseball equipment and I was pleased to note that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North equipped himself with a cricket bat in good British tradition. The fact remains that, if householders are likely to have weapons of defence—there is nothing in the Bill to prevent it—burglars are more likely to be tooled up too and there will be an escalation of violence, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, North put it, an arms race between the burglar and the householder. The other risk is that burglars may go for softer targets. They may think it too risky to choose households where people are armed with swords or knives. They will be less likely to confront the firearm-owning toff but more likely to invade the home of the old lady living alone. The Bill would have a disproportionate effect: the lord in his castle armed with his shotgun would mean that the burglar would be more likely to carry firearms, while the old lady in the Burnt Oak estate in my constituency would be at more risk of being severely beaten by an intruder. She would not be in a position to defend herself, not because of the law, under this Bill or the previous one, but because she is frail and the burglar has switched his modus operandi because he is frightened of attacking wealthier homes, which, as the figures I gave earlier show, are less likely targets anyway.