Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 23 November (HL Deb, col 1931), (1) which authority will be responsible for requesting details of local areas' use of any Taser in a mental health setting, and (2) what protocols will be used to determine how, and when, any such request is made.

All police forces in England and Wales are expected to publish their own record level Use of Force data (including in mental health settings). 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.

The Government has written to each Police and Crime Commissioner, Chief Constable and Chair of local Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat Partnerships to ask them to make arrangements for the joint identification and scrutiny of any use of Taser in a mental health setting in their areas. It is a matter for local partnerships to determine the most appropriate arrangements for doing so.