Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Hollern Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The rape charge rate is a serious matter, and Operation Soteria Bluestone, which the hon. Lady will be familiar with, has been rolled out around the country under the supervision of the safeguarding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines). In the forces that adopted that measure early, rape charge rates dramatically increased by two to three times. As that rolls out around the country, those charge rates will increase, but we would like to go further.

On the question of specialist trained officers, now that we have record numbers of officers across England and Wales as a whole, we will be targeting individual forces with training and recruiting a specified number of specialist officers to make sure that those people are in place to properly investigate these issues, because we want to do a lot more in this area.

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Justice on the adequacy of compensation for police officers injured in the course of their duties.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

16. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Justice on the adequacy of compensation for police officers injured in the course of their duties.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

The police injury benefit scheme provides ongoing and one-off payments to former police officers who have been injured or disabled in the line of duty.

[Kate Hollern]

I was recently shocked to discover that police officers are entitled to official compensation only if they are injured while taking an exceptional risk, and a risk is considered exceptional only if it would not normally be expected. That sounds strange, does it not? With more than 40,000 assaults against police in the past year, and many officers ineligible for injury compensation because of that rule, does the Home Secretary agree that these guidelines effectively normalise violence against police and must be changed?

[Chris Philp]

We certainly do not want to see violence against police normalised. That is why we legislated to double the maximum sentence for assaults against emergency workers just a year or two ago. My understanding is that the payments under the police injury benefit scheme can go up to 85% of salary, but since the hon. Lady has raised the point, I will take a look at it.