Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her policy is on the inclusion of (a) mobile phone chargers and (b) e-cigarettes in fire statistics released by her Department.

Mobile phone chargers are currently captured under the category ‘battery charger’ in the Incident Recording System, tablets under the ‘pc’ category and e-cigarettes can be recorded in an ‘other’ category.

Home Office officials have regular discussions with fire and rescue services and other users of fire statistics, including the Fire and Rescue Statistics User Group. Feedback from these groups, including how to best capture new technology, will be used to inform an update of the categories in the Incident Recording System at the next opportunity. Any additions to fire data collections are governed by the Single Data List process to ensure that the burden of any new data collection is considered.