Air Weapons and Licensing Bill passes final stage

The Scottish Government's bill to introduce licensing for air weapons and amend other aspects of licensing law, passed its fnal stage in the Scottish Parliament yesterday.

MSPs approved the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Bill by 92 votes to 17 after a stage 3 debate that saw amendments made to address some but by no means all of the concerns of licensing lawyers about the working of the current law on transfers of licences. (This will be the subject of a briefing in the July Journal.) Conservative and Liberal Democrat members opposed the bill as a disproportionate response to the level of air weapon crime.

The main aim of the bill is to impose tighter controls on the estimated half a million unlicensed air weapons in Scotland, though it will be the owners rather than the individual weapons that require to be registered and licensed.

It also enacts a tighter licensing regime for scrap metal dealers, including new rules that will prevent cash payments and a new regime for venues offering sexual entertainment such as lapdancing, and creates a new role of civic licensing standards officer to help enforce civic licensing regimes.

The alcohol provisions include new offences of giving, or making available, alcohol to a child or young person for consumption in a public place. A fit and proper person test is introduced for premises licences and personal licences, and licensing boards will also be able to consider spent offences. Where a personal licence is revoked for failure to submit a refresher training certificate, there will no longer be a five year ban on reapplying for a licence.

A licensing board, when considering overprovision, may determine that the whole of its area is a single locality. Boards will require to publish an annual report on the exercise of their functions.

After the vote Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said: “Offences involving air weapons rose for the first time in seven years in 2013-14 and accounted for almost half of all offences involving a firearm. This new legislation will better protect our communities by taking these potentially lethal weapons out of the hands of those who would misuse them.

“We are not banning air weapons outright, but ensuring that their use is properly regulated and users have a legitimate reason for them. We believe this legislation strikes the right balance between protecting communities and allowing legitimate shooting in a safe environment to continue."