Crime: Firearms

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of recent seizures, what is their estimate of (1) the number of illegal firearms in circulation, and (2) the percentage of firearms illegally imported into the United Kingdom that have been seized in the last year.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my policing interests and beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order paper.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, offences involving firearms, excluding air weapons, have fallen by 31% since July 2010. The National Ballistics Intelligence Service regularly assesses the volume of illegal firearms in the UK, but this information is operationally sensitive and is not suitable for release. The National Crime Agency and the police continue to conduct specific operations to disrupt the threats posed by illegal firearms.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Answer given by the Minister and intrigued by the fact that on 21 November, in response to another Question on this point asked by my noble friend Lord Rosser, she said:

“Without doing the maths, I cannot give the noble Lord the figures off the top of my head. However, I will certainly write to him with accurate figures”.—[Official Report, 21/11/16; col. 1724.]


I assume from the Answer she has just given that she cannot share the figures that she wrote to my noble friend. Can I put it to her that, if there were 126 illegal arms seized in 2014-15—these are the figures she gave on 21 November—445 seized in 2015-16 and 800 in just four weeks as a result of this joint exercise by the counterterrorism police and the National Crime Agency, this is a situation in which there is an explosion of the problem of illegal firearms and that the Government should do a great deal more?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

What the noble Lord points out is not an explosion in the problem but a revelation in the solution, because that four-week operation showed us that a new approach to intelligence collection and sharing is the way forward. The operation that I think he is referring to—Operation Dragon Root—yielded excellent results.