Subsidies for gun owners must end

Writing at Liberal Democrat Voice, Caroline Pidgeon sets out the facts showing how the freeze on gun licence fees effectively means that, at time of huge funding pressure, the police continue to subsidise gun owners:

Since 2001 the cost of a five-year gun licence across the UK has been frozen at £50, which in practice equates to just £10 per year. The cost of renewing a five-year licence gun licence is even lower, at just £40. By way of comparison an annual fishing rod licence costs £27, or £72 to obtain an annual licence to fish for salmon or sea trout.

To get some understanding of the significant expenditure by the police in issuing gun licences I recently asked a Mayoral Question to find out about the situation just in London. The reply from the Mayor of London stated that the Metropolitan Police Service’s total expenditure on carrying out checks and issuing gun licences had been in excess of £20 million since 2008. At the same the Mayor of London has admitted that the total income raised by these fees has raised a mere £1.5 million since 2008.

... The bottom line is that gun licence fees raise just a small fraction of the cost facing the police in issuing them. Valuable resources that should be spent on policing whole communities are instead being devoted to subsidising gun owners. That is wrong and indefensible.

When the pressures facing police forces across the country are so significant it is time something changed. Gun licence fees need to be significantly increased. The days of gun owners being subsidised must come to an end.

Read the full article here.