Police Officer Safety

Debate between Holly Lynch and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch]

There are no two ways about it. I will come on to that in more detail in my speech. That is a very serious incident. Sending officers out on their own just is not working.

When I asked the House of Commons Library for statistics, by police force, of assaults on officers, it responded by saying that there is a lack of official statistics in this area. A recent Home Office report cites that assaults on officers and police community support officers are not collected as national statistics. Instead, the figures are estimates based on two limited data sources. To be fair to the Home Office, I very much welcome the recent efforts it has made to improve the system for recording assaults on officers, but there is still a long way to go.

Last year the Home Office asked forces to provide data on assaults on a voluntary basis. However, it recognised that there were flaws to that approach, concluding that

“the figures…are not directly comparable at police force area level”,

and that

“the estimates are relatively crude, and should be interpreted with caution.”

As the data are not collected, we simply cannot answer some of the bigger questions. Is the number of assaults going up? Are some forces failing to protect their officers? Have cuts to police budgets made policing more dangerous?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her campaign. I and other Members of the House attended the police bravery awards this year, where we saw the incredible work being done by our police forces all over the country. One of the issues that has been raised for several years is that cuts in the psychiatric service have resulted in police officers having to deal with mental health issues in the custody suite. Does she agree that that needs to be addressed? This is really not what police officers should be doing.

[Holly Lynch]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We see police forces having to pick up the slack where there have been cuts to other agencies—agencies that should be taking a lead in dealing with some of these quite difficult social problems. I will come to how many vulnerable people were missing when I did my shift with West Yorkshire police and the impact that had on how many officers were available to respond to 999 calls.

To return to the statistics, I am asking the Home Office to work with police forces to standardise the process of collecting that information. Quite simply, if an officer is assaulted, in any force at any time, let us record it. Assaults on officers must be the subject of robust investigations. While officers need to play their part in that and follow up by reporting instances where they have been the victim of an assault, I also appreciate that they will not report injuries unless they have the confidence that those involved will be investigated and prosecuted appropriately.