To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of (a) verbal abuse and (b) physical attacks experienced by NHS staff in (i) Coventry, (ii) the West Midlands and (iii) England in each of the last three years; and what steps his Department is taking to protect NHS staff in those areas from such abuse.

We do not currently have a national mechanism to capture and report incidents of violence and aggression in the National Health Service, as data is held at a local level.

The NHS Staff Survey does ask questions relating to incidences of violence, harassment, and abuse. The 2022 NHS Staff Survey indicated that 14.7% of NHS staff have self-reported that they had experienced at least one incident of physical violence from patients, service users, relatives, or other members of the public in the last 12 months. In addition, 27.8% of NHS staff who completed the survey experience at least one incident of harassment, bullying or abuse in the last 12 months from patients/service users, their relatives, or members of the public. This figure is broadly consistent across previous years. Data extracted from the Staff Survey is provided below for England, Coventry and the West Midlands.

The following table shows the extracted data from the Staff Survey for England, Coventry and the West Midlands relating to Question 13a (‘In the last 12 months how many times have you personally experienced physical violence at work from: Patients / service users, their relatives or other members of the public?):

The following table shows the extracted data from the Staff Survey for England, Coventry and the West Midlands relating to Question 14a (‘In the last 12 months how many times have you personally experienced harassment, bullying or abuse at work from patients/service users, their relatives or other members of the public?’):

NHS England has commissioned several data insight workstreams to better understand the current landscape of statistics, data reporting and associated challenges. This includes a national review of all available data and intelligence sources and an analysis of the costs of violence to the health care system in England and a review of the impact on the safety and wellbeing of NHS staff.

Tackling violence against NHS staff is largely an employer led issue, with NHS organisations responsible for putting in place their own policies and procedures to support staff, giving them access to appropriate training and making appropriate arrangements for security.

NHS England established a NHS Violence Reduction Programme in 2019, which aims to prevent and reduce violence and aggression from patients, their families and the public, and mitigate the effects of violence and abuse on NHS staff.

In 2022, the Government legislated through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act to double the sentence for assaults on emergency workers to a maximum of two years.