Emergency Workers (Protection) Bill

That is absolutely true. The Sentencing Guidelines Council provides a mechanism that can read across to all sorts of offences. For example, there are other at-risk groups: other public sector workers are rightly included in the present overarching principles, which also cover teachers who are beaten up by angry parents. Such issues should be a factor that is dealt with in sentencing. It is inappropriate that someone who is serving the public by teaching children should be more vulnerable because they are in that situation. It is therefore wrong to try to over-complicate the law by slicing off little bits and creating legislative ghettos if we can deal with the problem properly under existing law. I hope to persuade hon. Members that we can do that within the scope of a single offence. That means better constructed, less complicated and clearer law and greater ease in securing prosecutions. I believe that we all agree that people need to understand the law. Some hon. Members suggested that adding bells and whistles to it will make it easier to understand but I do not accept that. The law needs to work well on the ground and creating different offences for different groups of people is a recipe for confusion.