Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of mandating that a person in possession of an antique firearm hold (a) a certificate of technical obsolescence or (b) other proof of that firearm's irreversibility.

As set out in our Serious Violence Strategy, the Government is committed to strengthening controls on antique firearms to tackle their increasing use in crime. We included in the Policing and Crime Act 2017 a power to define in law which firearms can safely be regarded as antique and which still present a danger to the public and therefore require licensing.

We held a public consultation late last year to seek views on the technical detail of how best to define ‘antique firearm’ in law. We are now carefully considering the consultation responses before laying draft regulations later this year.