Police officers in England and Wales are to be asked whether they want to routinely carry a gun and drop the principle of normally being unarmed. The Police Federation, which represents 123,000 rank and file officers will begin surveying its members next week.

Police have grown increasingly concerned about threats to their safety from assaults as they perform their regular duties and the high likelihood of terrorist attacks, which unarmed officers are likely to be first to respond to.

The survey will ask officers whether they think they or more of their colleagues should carry Taser electrical weapons, whether there should be more specialist armed officers and whether they themselves want to carry a gun as they patrol the streets.



It is the first national survey asking officers if they want to carry a gun since 2006. Che Donald, the federation’s lead on firearms, said of the survey: “Given the current climate, we feel it’s time to seek the views of our members again.

“Policing has changed significantly over recent years, not just around the types of crime we are dealing with and greater use of technology, but also the threat, harm and risk to the public and to officers themselves.

“This survey seeks to determine our members’ views to inform our position on the issue of routine arming.”

There is increasing support within policing for officers in England and Wales to be defensively armed, for their own protection, in the same way their colleagues in Northern Ireland are. It is still a minority view at chief constable level, where the vast majority want to avoid routine arming, believing it would change the face of policing.



Britain’s police are largely unarmed and officers need to volunteer to carry a gun. Five percent of all police are armed, according to Home Office figures, out of a total of 125,851 officers in England and Wales.

One senior source, who opposes routine arming, said: “The mood is changing.” Another added that lightly trained armed officers would not “counter the threat”. A further source said: “The threat has changed in a decade.”

Last month the Guardian revealed that Simon Chesterman, the national lead for armed policing, had written a paper discussing the possibility of offering every frontline officer in England and Wales a gun to counter the threat of a marauding terrorist attack.

Police chiefs met a fortnight ago, where they decided to increase levels of fully trained firearms officers in some areas where response times were relatively low. But Chesterman said: “There was also a very active debate around routine arming.

“Chief constables have decided that now is not the right time to consider routine arming of some or all frontline resources, but that is an issue we will have to keep under review in line with the threat in future.”

The federation policy on Taser weapons is that every officer who wants one should be allowed to carry one, and police chiefs are set to agree a further rollout to the frontline.

Earlier this year, a survey of London police officers by the Metropolitan Police Federation found that just over half said they would carry a gun routinely if asked to do so. One in 10 said they would quit rather than carry a firearm.

Police outside of the capital are concerned because they have fewer guns than those in London and fear they might struggle to get enough armed officers quickly enough to the scene of a terrorist attack.



Ministers and police chiefs have been trying to increase the number of specially trained armed officers since the November 2015 terrorist attack on Paris, which left 130 people dead.

The former Scotland Yard chief Brian Paddick, now the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on home affairs in the House of Lords, said routine arming would damage policing and was not practical, saying: “It would be another nail in the coffin of policing by consent. The French police are all armed and that did not stop Paris.”



The latest figures show an increase in armed officers of 11% to 6,278, compared with the previous year. Labour said the number was lower than before the Conservatives took power in 2010.

Labour’s Louise Haigh, the shadow policing minister, said: “These troubling new statistics show that forces across the country are being left exposed by the government’s continuing failure to ensure they are at full strength.

“Armed officer numbers are down 10% on 2010 and, given the unprecedented nature of the terrorist threat, it is incomprehensible that last year alone we saw forces nationwide still losing armed officers.

“Incredibly, forces such as Merseyside police saw their numbers fall by a shocking 12% despite the challenges they face in tackling gun crime and countering the threat of terrorism.”

Government figures show the number of armed operations – that is, where police carry a gun – was up 7% last year compared with the previous year, reaching 15,705.

On Wednesday police in Birmingham shot a man in an incident now being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The man is being treated in hospital.

David Jamieson, the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands, said: “An incident like this is extremely rare in the West Midlands and, as such, I will be monitoring the situation closely. This is the first time West Midlands police has shot someone since 2000.”

Government figures released on Thursday showed the West Midlands area had the biggest increase last year in armed police operations of any area in England and Wales. The Home Office said: “The West Midlands region experienced the largest increase in the number of police firearms operations between the year ending 31 March 2016 and 31 March 2017, with a rise of 626 (41%) firearms operations.”