Tories attack 'truly terrible' rise in gun crime

Gun crime in England and Wales rose by 35 per cent last year to a record level that saw 97 fatal shootings and 558 serious injuries from bullet wounds, the Home Office said yesterday.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, figures that were described by the Opposition as "truly terrible". The rise was the fourth consecutive annual increase, with 2,200 more firearms offences last year than the previous peak in 1993.

Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled from 2,636 to 5,871 since the 1997 ban on such weapons after the Dunblane massacre.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will meet chief constables, senior civil servants and community leaders for a "gun summit" at the Home Office today.

The meeting was called after the murder of two Birmingham girls in a gangland gun battle outside a hairdressing salon last week.

Mr Blunkett said: "This is not a task for government alone but we accept the challenge of our responsibility for leading the necessary debate on the measures required to reverse the trend revealed in the crime statistics."

Publishing the figures yesterday, John Denham, a Home Office minister, said: "I am concerned at the significant rise that we have seen in firearm offences. The number of male homicide victims of shootings was up 41 per cent on the previous year and the proportion of crime in which firearms were used increased from 0.3 per cent to 0.4 per cent."

Oliver Letwin, the shadow Home Secretary, said the figures were "truly terrible". He said gun crime would not be beaten until gangs were broken up and the streets "reclaimed for the honest citizen by proper neighbourhood policing". Earlier this week, Mr Blunkett announced five-year sentences for possession of illegal firearms and a ban on carrying replica weapons without "good reason".

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said the figures must prompt "a new, tougher approach" towards people who carry guns. "Gangs which use and glorify guns as status symbols must be relentlessly targeted by the police," he added.

Gun crime has doubled since Labour came to power and has soared by nearly 600 per cent since 1978, when there were 1,437 firearms offences.

Some 69 per cent of firearms offences during the year, excluding airguns, happened in the districts of three police forces: Metropolitan (4,192 incidents, 42 per cent of the total); Greater Manchester (1,361 crimes, 14 per cent); and West Midlands (1,289 offences, 13 per cent).

There were 332 firearms offences in West Yorkshire, 299 gun incidents in Merseyside and 267 in Thames Valley. Some areas such as North Wales (six firearms offences) and Cumbria (nine) were almost free of gun crime, including air weapons offences.

The Association of Chief Police Officers' spokesman on crime policy, Paul Hampson, said: "The recent rise in firearms offences concerns all of us. Acpo is very supportive of the Government's intention to strengthen the law in relation to illegally-held firearms."

The Shooting Sports Trust warned that moves to remove fake guns from the streets could drive more criminals to obtain real firearms.