Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the use of firearms to commit crimes in the UK.

There was an 11% increase in police recorded offences involving firearms (excluding air weapons) in the year ending December 2017 compared with the previous year. This continues an upward trend which began in 2014. There is evidence that part, but not all, of the increase is due to specific improvements in the recording of firearms offences. Despite recent increases, offences are still 32% below a decade ago (year ending March 2007) and 43% lower than their peak in 2005/6.

Our new Serious Violence Strategy explains how changes in the drugs market are driving the recent increase in serious violence, including gun crime, and sets out a major programme of work to tackle this issue.

In respect of gun crime, we are actively strengthening controls on legally owned firearms to mitigate the risk of them falling into criminal hands. We have included measures in our Offensive Weapons Bill to ban certain high energy rifles, rapid firing rifles and bump stocks. Other measures include greater regulation of antique firearms, new offences on converting imitation firearms and selling defectively deactivated firearms, improving the controls on firearms dealers and establishing a new National Firearms Threat Centre to coordinate law enforcement activity to disrupt the supply of illegal firearms.