...the cost should be ideally included within the application fee, or a set universal GP fee.
I agree that the FLD contacting the GPs of FAC/SGC applicants seems on the face of it to be a good idea.
However, we really shouldn't be inviting anyone to make further rods for our own backs.
The costs relating to FAC/SGC adminstration are laid down in statute. If the HO/FLD want reports on us in connection with that process, and the reports cost money, then the HO/FLD should pay for those reports - since it seems very much against the spirit of the Firearms Act to increase above the statutory rate the costs of applying for certification to exercise the right to possess and use firearms.
There's no need for
us to suggest that the statutory costs should be increase to cover those reports. If the reports are considered valuable in improving public safety, the government should make public funds available to pay for them. They might well decide to increase the statutory costs to do that - but they'll do that without us inviting them to do so. Would we not be better off preparing arguments to mitigate the impact of their doing so, in fact, rather than suggesting the plan to them?
This mania for 'consitency' really needs to be quashed as well. Geographical inconsitency in the detail of firearms law administration, as long as it is fair, should rather be seen a sign that the law is being interpreted according to different people's circumstances. To reduce the ability of the FLDs to interpret would, I think, be to invite inflexibility - which would work largely to our disadvantage.
Take the suggestion of 'a universal GP fee' for example. Apart from the arguments I've made against our paying for reports required by the FLD at all; what if the fee were set at what many GPs would see as a perfectly reasonable rate of £200? Super for the folk who have been charged £300 - less so for those charged £20.
In summary: the FLD should be funded to pay for the reports they need, and a possible result of the dogged insistence on consistency across the country is likely to result in nearly everyone getting a worse time, and the people currently getting the worst time to be in the same position they were before.
We must keep in mind that this whole situation appears to have arisen from the HO/Police deciding that the GPs (on the apparent say-so of their trade union - which really has no more success getting GPs
en masse to do anything than anyone else does) would, for no fee, complete a straightforward factual questionnaire based on a read-through of the applicant's medical history held by them. At the same time, it was decided that further reports would, if needed, be paid for by the applicant - a point which shooting organiations at the time apparently failed to realise was completely novel, and seems to have been regarded by the HO/FLD/CCs (not altogether unpredictably) as an invitation lawfully to place applicants at the hazard of any fees for medical reports requested by the FLD.
And here we are.
