HC Deb 12 July 1999 vol 335 cc65-6W
17. Mr. Hinchliffe

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will bring forward legislation to control the use of air guns. [89227]

Mr. Boateng

We have no immediate plans to change the law relating to air weapons but firearms legislation will be kept under close scrutiny to see if there is anything further which needs to be done to protect public safety. To this end, I have asked the Firearms Consultative Committee, the independent statutory body that advises the Government on firearms matters, to consider again the

This Department operates two data matching services: the Generalised Matching Service, which matches different DSS computer systems against each other and against data acquired from other Government Departments to identify anomalies for investigation; and the Housing Benefit Matching Service which matches data from Local Authority (LA) Housing and Council Tax benefit administration systems against data held by the DSS and other LAs to identify anomalies for the LAs to investigate.

controls on air weapons as part of their programme of work for this year. I look forward to receiving their report later in the year and considering any recommendations they may make about airguns.