Met police to be asked if they want to routinely carry guns

Thousands of police officers will be asked if they want to be routinely armed in a major survey launched on Monday.

The Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents 32,000 officers in London, will ask all members to state whether they would be willing to carry a gun of a Taser.

They will also be asked if the prospect of being armed at all times would put them off the job altogether.

The survey follows an announcement by Scotland Yard last year that it plans to increase the number of firearms officers on hand to protect the capital by 600 in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015.

Nationally the armed policing strength is being boosted by 1,500 personnel.

Ken Marsh, chairman of the association, said:

He said the results of the survey - which runs until the end of January - could have a "lot of implications", including the prospect of officers having to pass harder fitness tests to be armed.

"This is not about just giving someone a gun and saying 'get out there', this is about the full requisite requirement of being, let's say, an SO19 officer, everything that goes with that, so there's a huge amount of work that would need to be done," he added.

Most police personnel in the UK are unarmed, setting the country apart from most other nations around the world.

But the question of whether officers should routinely carry guns has been debated for decades, and the issue has come under scrutiny again after recent terror attacks in Europe.

A poll in the wake of the Paris attacks found 58% of people believed officers should be routinely armed.

For more than two years the official threat level for international terrorism in the UK has stood at severe, meaning an attack is "highly likely".

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: