Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many firearms were seized by the police in each the last five years.

The Home Office does not routinely collect data on the number of firearms seized by police forces as part of their operations to tackle illegally held weapons and associated crime. However, figures provided by the National Ballistics Intelligence Service for numbers of firearms seized in each of the last five years are as follows:

2017/18 – 1,458;

2018/19 – 1,321;

2019/20 – 1,190;

2020/21 – 1,187;

2021/22 – 1070.

The UK has some of the toughest firearms controls in the world which include tackling the threat posed by the trafficking and misuse of illicit firearms.