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 NHS emergency workers in each of the last five years.

National Health Service employers are responsible for the safety and welfare of their staff in accordance with health and safety legislation.

The Department has not estimated the number of sexual assaults on NHS emergency workers in the last five years as these were not collected separately from other physical assaults, the last central collection for which was for 2015/16. The NHS Staff Survey also collects data on physical violence against those staff responding to the Survey but does not separate out sexual assaults.

The Department is working with the NHS on a new data collection for violence against and abuse of NHS staff which should be introduced from 2019.