Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information does his Department collect on the method of attack used against prison officers following an assault.

We publish statistics on the number of total assaults, broken down by type of weapon, as part of our Safety in Custody statistics. Table 3.10 at this link includes figures for assaults by weapon: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65b0e9f0f2718c0014fb1c2a/safety-in-custody-assaults-dec-22.xlsx.

The categories in the linked table above are what the MoJ collects on the method of attack.

We also hold data broken down by victim of these assaults, which we hold for staff, including for prison officers only.

Please note that assaults on staff are a subset of all assault incidents. Some assault incidents may be recorded as both a prisoner-on-prisoner assault and an assault on staff. Therefore, a breakdown of incidents involving weapons may also include some incidents where a weapon was used to assault a prisoner, but a staff member was also assaulted during the incident without the use of a weapon. It would not be possible to differentiate these incidents and produce a table of incidents where a weapon was used to assault a staff member, without review of the free text describing each incident