Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many reported assaults there have been on members of staff in Jobcentre Plus in (a) the UK, (b) Scotland, (c) West Lothian local authority area and (d) Livingston constituency in each of the last five years.

All incidents of unacceptable behaviour are taken very seriously by the department and particularly those of a physical assault. Jobcentres have a robust set of control measures in place to reduce such risk, and work with the police and departmental solicitors to ensure appropriate punitive action is taken against those who assault our staff. In September 2011 a new online incident reporting system was introduced to support staff and improve the quality of incidents reported.

It is also important to note that physical assaults, whether resulting in injury or not, on staff within jobcentres* are very rare and should be viewed in context of the millions of interactions undertaken by our staff each year.

*Incident figures reported by the department include our security officers / Customer Care Officers (CCO's) as staff on Jobcentre premises, by default.