Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of sexual assaults on hospital sites in the last three years.

The Government is committed to tackling the appalling crimes of rape and sexual assault. NHS England has introduced a comprehensive package of measures to improve sexual safety across the National Health Service. The Department feels strongly about this matter, which is why the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Baroness Merron) met with Surviving in Scrubs in February 2025 and agreed further action to address issues of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault including a focus on medical students. Actions include ensuring students know how to raise concerns, developing good practice on how investigations should be carried out and strengthening communications on the importance of protecting medical students on placements.

NHS providers have a mandatory duty to notify the Care Quality Commission of all incidents that affect the health, safety, and welfare of people who use services, including allegations of sexual abuse.

NHS England is investing in improving the collection and analysis of sexual violence data to support organisations to implement policies that reduce incidents of sexual misconduct in the NHS.

Data relating to rape and sexual assault would be held at NHS trust level. There is no single national dataset in the NHS which captures information on rape and sexual assault for all combinations of staff, patients or visitors to NHS hospitals. Local police forces hold data where there has been a report to the police of rape or sexual assault.

For assaults on staff, the NHS Staff Survey now includes questions about staff experiences of sexual misconduct. Results from the 2024 staff survey show 8.82% of staff received unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature from either patients, service-users or members of the public and 3.66% experienced unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature from colleagues.