§ Lord Burtonasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will place in the Library of the House drafts of the proposed memorandum of guidance on the administration of the firearms Acts up to 1997, for the purposes of clarity and open consultation before final versions are published.
§ Lord Williams of MostynI do not believe that placing drafts of individual Home Office circulars and guidance in the Library will be helpful and could even cause confusion about the status of any particular piece of guidance. Only final versions of guidance that are actually issued to police forces are placed in the Library. Next year we plan to revise the comprehensive document,Firearms Law: Guidance to the Police issued in 1989. We shall be consulting the main interested parties about this before it is eventually published.