Shotgun licensing merger rejected by MPs in Westminster debate

Policing minister Sarah Jones MP arrived in Westminster Hall on 23 February to respond to a debate on firearms licensing and found herself facing a chamber that had spent three hours in unanimous opposition to her department’s proposals. Of the 24 MPs who contributed, not one argued in favour of subjecting shotguns to the same licensing regime as rifles.
The debate had its origins in a public petition. More than 120,000 people signed it, most of them within 10 days of its launch – a rate that placed it among the fastest-signed in the Petitions Committee’s recent history. Lisa Amers, the GunTrader operations manager who started it, was in the public gallery to watch proceedings.
The arguments against the proposed merger were built on statistics. Jerome Mayhew, Conservative, told the chamber that legally held shotguns were involved in an average of 3.8 homicides per year over the past decade. Expressed as a proportion of the UK population, that is approximately one in 15 million – meaning you are more likely to win the lottery than be killed by someone with a legally held shotgun.
Greg Smith noted that the figure falls well short of the Health and Safety Executive’s own benchmark for regulatory intervention, which sits at one death per million. The Government’s own standards, he argued, do not support the case for change.
Mr Mayhew went further, setting the human cost of the proposals against what they could realistically achieve. At stake, he said, were 20,000 jobs and an economic impact approaching £1 billion – weighed against a partial reduction in an annual average of 3.8 deaths. “On any rational basis, there is simply no argument that holds water that suggests the price of 20,000 jobs and an economic hit of close to £1 billion, in order to save a percentage of 3.8 lives a year, is a credible policy position.”
Stuart Anderson, Conservative, addressed directly the two incidents the Government most frequently cites in support of merging shotgun and rifle licensing. The Plymouth shooting of 2021 and the Prosper case of 2024, he argued, would not have been prevented by merging the two licensing regimes. Jake Davidson had been flagged by local police as unsuitable to hold a shotgun certificate before he murdered five people in Plymouth; the warning went unacted upon. Nicholas Prosper acquired his shotgun by forging a Section 2 certificate, a crime that fell entirely outside the licensing system. “Merging the two regimes would not have made an impact on either of those tragic incidents, horrible as they are,” Mr Anderson said.
Julie Minns, Labour, had gone to the source. Having read the Plymouth coroner’s preventing future deaths report, the document the Government cites as justification for the consultation, she told MPs it contained no recommendation to merge the two regimes. The Law Commission’s 2015 review of firearms law reached the same non-conclusion. “Evidence, not symbolism, must guide our decisions,” she said.
Kit Malthouse, Conservative, raised a concern about unintended consequences. Forcing shotgun owners through the Section 1 process, he suggested, could lead some to conclude they might as well apply for a full firearms licence, swapping a shotgun for a rifle in the process. “Although the number of shotguns out there might fall, the number of rifles, and therefore the overall lethality of the population of firearms, might actually rise,” he warned.
John Cooper, Conservative, put it plainly. Shotgun certificate holders rank among the most law-abiding people in Britain. “Very often the only contact they have with the police is when officers come to check their certificate.” Heavier licensing burdens those people, he said. It does nothing to the criminals who pose a genuine risk, because they do not apply for licences in the first place.
The minister, Sarah Jones, in her response, acknowledged what she had heard. The Government had reached no firm conclusions, she said, and the consultation would be genuinely open – ranging from no change at all to full alignment of the two regimes, with numerous possibilities in between. She went further than many had anticipated, expressing openness to a centralised licensing system within the Government’s broader police reform agenda, a proposal that organisations including the Countryside Alliance have been advancing for some time.
A timetable was the one thing she did not provide. The consultation had been promised before Christmas, then before the end of January. It has not appeared.
Jak Abrahams, senior political affairs manager at BASC, said the parliamentary mood reflected the strength of feeling among those who had signed the petition and written to their MPs. “These proposals would not strengthen public safety, but they would increase pressure on already stretched licensing departments and penalise responsible people who comply with the law. We will continue to make the case to ministers and MPs as the Government considers its next steps.”
Roger Seddon, shooting campaign manager at the Countryside Alliance, welcomed the minister’s openness to centralised licensing but kept his focus on what comes next. “It is the upcoming consultation where numbers will truly count.”
Ms Amers told GunMart she had left the gallery encouraged. “The debate has reinforced my belief that keeping the licences separate is absolutely the right approach. I sincerely hope the Government listens.”
Monday’s debate produced no vote, no legislation and no timetable. What it produced was a clear picture of where Parliament stands. Whether the shooting community can translate that into a consultation response of sufficient weight remains the question.