Blair Pledges Action On Gun Crime As Toll Rises

A review of gun laws to establish increased sentences for young offenders, with penalties for being gang members, was promised by Tony Blair yesterday amid fears that London’s gunmen are increasingly exporting drugs and firearms violence to other parts of the country.

Reacting to continuing concern about the shootings in south London, where three teenagers were murdered in 11 days, the prime minister confirmed that the government was looking seriously at calls by Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, for tougher firearms sentences.

It would mean a clarification of the minimum age for the mandatory five-year sentence for firearms offences. Concerns over the law have been raised by a court of appeal judgment in March which cast doubt on the use of mandatory five-year sentences for 18-year-olds.

Mr Blair also indicated that the review might consider lowering the age at which the mandatory five-year sentence for carrying an illegal gun applies. “We’ve got to lower that age, I think, as the police are suggesting, down to 17,” he told BBC1’s Sunday AM show. Police may also be given powers to carry out surveillance on the homes of suspected gun holders.

It also emerged yesterday that John Reid, the home secretary, is to chair a summit on gun crime with police and community leaders next month, with full proposals expected to be drawn up by then.

Mr Blair spoke against a backdrop of fresh shootings in London and Manchester. A man, aged 28 and not yet named, was shot dead in his car in Hackney early on Saturday. In Harlesden, north-west London, a man was shot in the leg.

In Manchester, police continued inquiries yesterday after three men were shot in incidents in the city last Friday.

An 18-year-old was shot in the back outside a youth club in Moss Side, close to where Jesse James ,15, was shot dead last September.

In a unrelated incident two-and-a-half miles away two men aged 19 and 27 were injured in a drive-by shooting. None of the injuries is thought to be life threatening.

Ministers are absorbing warnings from senior officers who say many shootings involve the same highly mobile criminals using the same stock of constantly circulating weapons. After the murder of the latest victim, Billy Cox, 15, shot dead in his bedroom, Cressida Dick, the Met’s deputy commissioner, said London offenders were now being caught in cities across the UK, either trying to take over the drugs markets or carrying out enforcement for local drug barons. “We are dealing with greater mobility of the more serious and entrenched offenders,” she said.

“We are seeing firearms being used in several different crimes, and sometimes by different offenders. It is simple to hire a firearm for the night, give it back, and not be associated with it.”

On the Sunday AM programme yesterday Mr Blair repeated his view that the killings were not a symptom of a wider malaise; the issue was “how do we make sure that these groups of young people within these specific criminal cultures, who are getting into gangs at an early age and using guns, how do we clamp down on them very hard and provide solutions for that?

“Overall there’s good news on crime, and in particular gun crime.

“However, if you talk to the police they tell you that there has been a worrying rise in the number of young people involved in gangs, and these gangs are increasingly using firearms.”

Opposition MPs questioned the government’s approach. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “More legislation is not going to stop gun violence and gang culture. Rather than new laws, we need more police and more effective policing.”

David Davis, the Conservatives’ shadow home secretary, condemned the prime minister for reacting to headlines. “This will be the fourth summit on gun crimes and gangsters the prime minister has had , and at every turn the problem has still got worse,” he said.

Justine Greening, MP for Putney and the Conservative party’s youth vice-chairwoman, said Britain had reached a “tipping point” where it had to tackle youth crime. She has released figures showing that a third of all recorded muggings in London last year were by 11 to 16-year-olds, and 49% of all suspected mugging offenders were of the same age.

“Against this backdrop of largely un-addressed serious and violent crime, is it any wonder that behaviour escalates, often with fatal consequences, as in Peckham, Streatham and Clapham?” she said.