Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 29 June 2016 to Question 41026, when she plans to extend the recording of ethnicity, age, location and outcome of all serious uses of force by police officers, including the use of tasers, beyond the Pathfinder forces.

No data is recorded centrally on the frequency and relative effect of the use of TASER on people from Afro-Caribbean communities and the general population in England and Wales.

We are committed to improving transparency and accountability on the police use of force, which is why in 2014, the then Home Secretary asked former CC David Shaw (Chief Constable for West Mercia until July 2016) to lead a review into what data should be recorded and published.

The Review recommended the police record and publish the ethnicity, age, location and outcome of all serious use of force by police officers, including physical restraint and the use of TASER ® X26. Eight pathfinder police forces worked to implement the new data collection system from April 2016, and from October all forces are now working to implement this system. All forces are expected to publish their record level use of force data. We expect a sub-set of the data collected to form part of the overall Home Office 2017-18 Annual Data Requirement, which will be published on an annual basis.

There are no plans to review of the use of TASER in mental health settings. The deployment of police officers to mental health settings and the tactics used are an operational matter for the police. Any use of force by police officers in psychiatric wards – or any other setting – must be appropriate, proportionate, necessary and conducted as safely as is possible. If police officers need to use force, it is right that they are expected to account for their actions.