Attacks on NHS Staff

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

May I join colleagues in saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray? I hope that right hon. and hon. colleagues from across the House are familiar with my “Protect the Protectors” campaign, and I am truly grateful to the many who have lent it their support. As part of that campaign, I have lobbied for protections that would cover all emergency service workers and NHS staff. I will outline what needs to change and how we should go about it.

My campaign started last summer after I spent a Friday evening in August on patrol in my constituency with West Yorkshire police. I joined PC Craig Gallant, who was single crewed and responding to 999 calls. When a routine stop quickly turned nasty, I was so concerned for his safety that I rang 999 myself to stress just how urgently he needed back-up. Thankfully, other officers arrived at the scene shortly afterwards to help manage the situation. Although, amazingly, no injuries were sustained on that occasion, I saw the dangers for myself and understood just how vulnerable all emergency service workers are, especially when they are out on their own.

Since being elected in May 2015, I have spent time shadowing all the frontline services in my constituency to understand the work they do and the pressures they are under, and to inform my work here on their behalf, but I confess that I am also the daughter of a retired police sergeant and a nurse. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thanks very much. Both my parents were subject to abuse in their roles as public servants, so I feel very strongly about this issue. I have done shifts with the emergency services—the police, the fire and rescue service, and paramedics—and spent time with doctors and nurses in A&E. I also spent a Friday night with out-of-hours mental health services and I will spend a day with the local search and rescue team in the next few weeks. May I take this opportunity once again to pay tribute to the work that they all do? Behind their uniforms, they are incredibly brave and dedicated individuals who, regrettably, face risks almost daily that they simply should not have to face.

Our emergency services and NHS staff routinely go above and beyond their duties to keep the public safe, and the law must convey in the strongest possible terms how unacceptable it is for someone to set out deliberately to injure or assault an emergency responder or NHS worker. As we have already heard, NHS Protect figures show that there were 70,555 assaults on NHS staff last year—a significant increase on the year before. A report published just before Christmas by Yorkshire ambulance service revealed that its staff face violence and aggression weekly. There was a 50% increase in reported incidents of verbal and physical attacks on staff, with 606 incidents reported in 2015-16. Richard Bentley, a paramedic in Leeds, told the BBC that he had faced three serious assaults in five years. He had been bitten, head-butted and threatened with a knife.

I sought to do something about that unacceptable violence directed at our most dedicated public servants by drafting a ten-minute rule Bill, which I presented in the Chamber earlier this month. The Crime (Assaults on Emergency Services Staff) Bill would extend protections to all emergency service workers and—crucially in relation to this debate—would cover paramedics, doctors and nurses.

The petition, which was launched on 22 December by LBC presenter Nick Ferrari—I commend Mr Ferrari and LBC for their role in this campaign—calls on the Government to make it

“a specific criminal offence to attack any member of NHS Medical Staff.”

However, in consultation with several bodies representing all the emergency services workers with whom I have spent time, I agreed that it would make sense to seek to amend existing legislation to make assaulting an emergency service worker or NHS worker an aggravating factor in existing criminal charges, for several reasons.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. It goes without saying that assaults on NHS staff are appalling, but does she agree that our NHS staff want to know that any changes will make a meaningful difference to their safety and to enforcement? Given that the maximum penalty for assault of a police constable is six months, which is the same as the maximum penalty for common assault, I query whether a change in offence would actually make a difference. The key is enforcement. People want to know that if they are attacked, the police will come around, make arrests and throw the book at the people who did it.

[Holly Lynch]

I will come on to some of the problems that we identified with the stand-alone assault police charge, which led us to seek to amend existing legislation. The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, which I will come on to in more detail.

The petition states that for

“twenty years it has been a specific offence to attack a Police officer conducting their duties”

and refers to section 89 of the Police Act 1996, which deals with assault police charges. However, although that section sets a precedent for making assaulting a particular sector of public servants a stand-alone offence, it was precisely because of that legislation’s shortcomings that we sought to do things differently and more comprehensively.

Assault police charges are summary only, so are triable only in a magistrates court. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, the maximum custodial sentence for even the most serious assault police charges under section 89 —so-called category 1 offences—is 24 weeks, with offenders more likely to receive a fine or community order. Even if someone is given a custodial sentence for a category 1 offence, the sentencing guidelines for section 89 offences propose three questions:

“Has the custody threshold been passed?…if so, is it unavoidable that a custodial sentence be imposed?…if so, can that sentence be suspended?”

To me, none of that reinforces the seriousness of the crime or, more crucially, acts as a deterrent. I have seen examples of repeat offenders who, due to the problems with the assault police charge, have effectively collected suspended sentences. I share that information simply to explain why I have arrived at my proposals, which I believe would make our emergency services and NHS workers safer in their roles.

My Bill would make offences including malicious wounding, grievous or actual bodily harm and common assault aggravated offences when perpetrated against a police constable, firefighter, doctor, paramedic or nurse in the execution of his or her duty or, significantly, against someone assisting such persons in the execution of their duty. It would therefore cover NHS staff more broadly, which my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) mentioned. The Bill would ensure that tougher sentences were available to the judiciary when sentencing someone convicted of assaulting an emergency responder or NHS worker. As I said, the sentences handed down to offenders convicted of such acts must reflect the seriousness of the crime and, more crucially, serve as a tough deterrent to dissuade others from even considering committing such violence towards NHS workers in the first place.

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Lady makes a really interesting point, but the maximum penalty for causing grievous bodily harm with intent is life imprisonment in any event, and judges have sufficient sentencing powers to reflect the gravity of the aggravating factor of the attack having been on a public servant. Given that judges already have certain sentencing latitude, how would she change things?

[Holly Lynch]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. It is perhaps just an issue of clarity and the weight that comes with such uniformed service roles. Perhaps the problem is as simple as someone who is particularly angry and comes into an A&E department and lashes out at an NHS worker, not understanding that deterrent. We must explore how to ensure that that deterrent is understood by people who arrive at A&E departments.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I am not a lawyer, but in response to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), although it is quite true that someone could get a life sentence, most judges use a scale that depends on the seriousness of the crime. As far as I am concerned, six months is too low to be a deterrent for such crimes, whether they are committed against national health service workers, policemen or public service workers. The sentence should be higher, and judges can be guided on that—the scales can actually be altered.

[Holly Lynch]

My hon. Friend is right. That is exactly my concern with the assault police charge, which I have explored in detail through my “Protect the Protectors” campaign. The maximum sentence for that charge does not seem to reflect its seriousness. We have to look at all the options available for sentencing.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

Hon. Members have mentioned that Scotland already has the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, under which the maximum sentence for common assault is 12 months and the maximum fine is £10,000. That is about twice the general range in the rest of the UK. In Scotland, serious assaults like some of those that the hon. Lady describes are charged not under that Act but as serious assault, GBH or attempted murder, so the Act is very much for common assault.

[Holly Lynch]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. Again, in assault police charges we found that people were being sentenced under other crimes, which distorted the collection of information on frequency and prevalence of people committing those acts and brought into question the need to have a stand-alone assault police charge, if it is not effective in that regard. I approached the matter by asking what is the best way to sort out some of those charges, and what can we do? In putting together my Bill, it seemed like this was the best option.

One of the other aspects of my ten-minute rule Bill —it has been touched on already—would require someone who spits at or bites an emergency service or NHS professional to provide a blood sample to determine if that professional is at risk of contracting a communicable disease and would require antiviral treatment. If the Government were to adopt my Bill, it would become an offence to refuse, without reasonable excuse, to undergo such tests, much in the same way as it is to refuse a breathalyser test. That could save someone potentially unnecessary and invasive treatments as well as months of uncertainty and anxiety about whether they have contracted a potentially life-changing disease.

That anyone would assault or spit at an NHS worker is an absolute disgrace. The work that they do, often in the toughest of circumstances, should be met only with gratitude and admiration, never with violence. In seeking to protect them and all emergency service workers and NHS staff, my ten-minute rule Bill aimed to send a strong message. However, while it had cross-party support and proceeded unopposed, I am not naive about the nature of ten-minute rule Bills presented by Opposition Back Benchers; nor am I under any illusions about where we are in the parliamentary calendar. I therefore urge all MPs and campaigners to explore every opportunity to take action and bring about the changes we would like to see.

The spirit of my Bill was to say loud and clear that the public and elected representatives as legislators are on the side of NHS workers, and anyone who deliberately seeks to inflict injury on our medical professionals will feel the full and unavoidable force of the law. I wholeheartedly support any and all means of doing just that.