Jim Shannon

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) for drawing this issue to our attention. I also congratulate her on the way she represents her constituents in this Chamber and in the main Chamber. They are fortunate to have her. When they listen to her contributions, they will know how important that is. For emergency responders, being subject to physical violence and verbal abuse has become part of their daily routine. From 2024-25, there were 22,500 incidents of violence and abuse directed at ambulance workers across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a rise of 15% on 2023-24. Any level of abuse is of course unacceptable, but we must recognise that the number of incidents is dramatically on the rise, having reached the highest on record over those years. Female ambulance workers are most likely to be targeted by the public. Senior ambulance officials believe that the true number of incidents is even higher than reported. Other frontline forces, such as the police, regularly face abuse, with attacks on police happening an average of 100 times a day in the United Kingdom. Our officers now report that they are used to being punched and kicked but are growing increasingly concerned as abuse becomes more extreme and frequent. Hon. Members can get an idea from dashcam videos and police programmes showing motorway police on chases; they are attacked far too often. Firefighters are no exception. Firefighters from the Northern Ireland fire and rescue service have been attacked on a number of occasions, as indeed have the police, by people high on drugs or drink, or with their own particular problems. Data from the London Fire Brigade shows that on average there were two incidents of physical or verbal abuse every week from 2019 to 2023. Such behaviour can never, ever be accepted as an occupational hazard. These incidents have consequences beyond the emergency workers themselves, delaying responses and putting public safety at risk. Estimates suggest that more than 1,000 patients a day in England suffer potential harm from ambulance handover delays—these things are sometimes unseen, but they are none the less important. I will give an example from last week in Northern Ireland. On Saturday, a serious assault on a paramedic happened at Altnagelvin hospital. I read about it in the paper on, I think, Monday morning. The lady sustained injuries to the back of her head, neck, face and hands during the attack. She was beaten to the ground and then attacked when she was on the ground. This kind of behaviour towards our emergency workers, who carry out their duties with such compassion when helping those in need, is utterly unacceptable.