Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a 10-year long firearms licence.

At present there are no changes proposed to the firearms application process. On 1 November 2021 new statutory guidance for police forces on firearms licensing was introduced which brings greater consistency and higher standards to police firearms licensing across the country.

The statutory guidance introduced a requirement for relevant medical information about firearms applicants to be provided to the police before grant or renewal of a firearm or shotgun certificate, to ensure the safety of the public and of the firearm certificate holder themselves. This strengthens the firearms licensing process and brings greater consistency to licensing across both rural and urban areas, as the provision of relevant medical information has always been a very important part of the decision by police forces to grant or renew a firearm or shotgun certificate but its provision varied across the country.

While doctors can charge a fee to provide the medical information for a firearm application, whether a fee is charged or the level or the fee is a matter between the applicant and the doctor. In relation to the charges which may be levied by doctors, applicants are able to approach their GP to supply the necessary medical information, or they can arrange for the information to be provided by another suitably qualified GMC-registered doctor.

Information is published annually by the Home Office about firearm and shotgun certificates issued by the police. This does not include the numbers of licences which have not been renewed since the introduction of the requirement for medical information to be provided with the application.

The duration of firearm and shotgun certificates is five years. There are no plans to increase the duration of the length of these certificates at present. However, firearms licensing is kept under review and we will consider in due course whether there is a case for increasing the length of the duration of firearm and shotgun certificates following the introduction and monitoring over a reasonable period of time of the new digital firearms marker, which will improve how GP patient records are flagged to indicate to the doctor that a person is a firearm certificate holder, after the digital marker is released to GPs. It will also be important to ensure the statutory guidance for police forces is working as effectively as possible, and we will also have to have regard to the current independent reviews and Coroners’ inquests in Plymouth and West Sussex and whether any relevant findings are made.