00:00Are we heading towards a license fee hike? The answer to that is yes and we've known that for
00:04some time because it was included in the Labour manifesto before the election. So I think it's
00:10important to say that all we have is one article in the Telegraph and it doesn't tell us everything
00:16we would want to know. We don't have a timeline there, we don't have a reasoning, we have a lot
00:23of rumour. So we need to first of all establish what's going on and BASC is engaged in doing that.
00:31But having said that, once we know, we can then start putting arguments in place and respond to
00:39something that has rather more gravitas about it than one article in the newspapers. On the
00:45principle of it, the government seems to be ignoring, the policing minister seems to be
00:52ignoring this point about firearms licensing is for public safety and not for the benefit of
00:59firearms certificate holders. On the reported comments in the Telegraph, I don't think she's
01:04ignoring it but I think she's got it wrong. So the first thing to say is the Firearms Act
01:12is quite clear that the licensing system is purely for the protection of public safety
01:20and we as people who shoot should support that because it protects us. None of us want to have
01:27people who shouldn't have guns with guns because that would threaten shooting itself. That's the
01:34first point. The second point to say is that hiking the license fee doesn't guarantee that
01:40any of that money reaches cash-strapped licensing departments because it all goes into the Police
01:47General Fund and there is no guarantee, because the money isn't ring-fenced, that it will go into
01:54licensing. And in terms of where money is distributed at present, I think the chances
02:00of it going into licensing are fairly remote in a number of constabularies that run firearms
02:06licensing departments. What would BASC like to see the government do about firearms licensing fees?
02:12I think to start off with, it is quite ridiculous to fund inefficiency and so the police have to
02:19sort out inefficient licensing departments before we get into the business of full-cost recovery.
02:27I think that the shooting community would be happy to pay for an efficient service. If this was
02:33happening with the passport service or with driver licensing, it would be completely unacceptable
02:42to have driver's licenses or passports delayed by more than a year. It's quite extraordinary
02:48that this happens with firearms licensing service. And how can we expect an inefficient service
02:55to actually protect public safety properly? So what we would want to see is those inefficiencies
03:02sorted out and then a transparent process that actually establishes what full-cost recovery
03:09should be. And the way you do that is by costing each element of the firearms licensing process
03:16and out of the end falls a just figure. What's your target for the length of time it should take
03:24to grant, renew, issue a variation for a firearm or grant a shotgun certificate? It should take a
03:31maximum of 17 weeks. Many constabularies do it much quicker. Warwickshire for example in 12 weeks.
03:38If they can do that, is that a system worth paying extra for? Yes is the answer. If we could ensure
03:47that all licensing departments were processing grants and renewals within 17 weeks, I think that
03:55is a system worth paying for at a transparent price. In other words, the process of deciding
04:02what that figure is, is transparent.
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