Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 13 February 2020 to Question 13458 on Prisons: Crimes of Violence, what estimate he has made of the number of prison officer assaults that have been charged as assaults on an emergency worker since the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018.

It is not possible to identify the number of prison officer assaults that have been charged under the Assault on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018. This information would need to be requested from each prison who in turn will need to request information from their local police force to obtain this data which will require a high level or resource and will be at a disproportionate cost.

Convictions under the Assault on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 may be held on court record but to be able to identify these cases we would have to access individual court records which would be of disproportionate cost, as there will also be a need to sift through each case to identify whether the emergency worker was a prison officer as this piece of legislation covers other workers such as police officers, NHS workers, National Crime Agency officers etc.