To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many assaults on hospital staff there were in each year since 2017.

Data is not collected centrally on assaults against National Health Service staff in England. In the 2019 NHS Staff Survey, 14.9% of respondents experienced physical violence from patients, service users, their relatives or members of the public in the past year.

Any assault, physical or verbal, against NHS staff is unacceptable and should be reported and dealt with through the proper processes. The NHS has recently joined forces with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service in a Joint Agreement on Offences Against Emergency Workers. This provides a framework to ensure effective investigation and prosecution of cases where staff are the victim of a crime and sets out the standards victims of these crimes can expect.