Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of police officers are qualitied to use firearms in each year since 2018.

The Home Office collects and publishes information annually on the number of armed officers, and the proportion of armed officers relative to the total number of police officers, in the statistical publication on the police use of firearms.

The latest available data is for the year ending 31 March 2025 and can be accessed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-use-of-firearms-statistics-april-2024-to-march-2025

Data on the number of armed officers in England and Wales, as at 31 March each year since 2018, is available in data table 3. The proportion of operationally deployable armed officers relative to the total number of police officers can be found in figure 5 for the same period.