Emergency Workers (Protection) Bill

Our aim is to try to construct a simple offence. I have described at length the difficulty if an offence is complicated; for example, where we say, ““These people are in but those people are out””. In Committee, I hope that we can amend the obstruction provisions so that an emergency service worker responding to an emergency will be covered by the obstruction offence. That is where there is a big gap. A nurse accompanying an emergency team would certainly be covered, but the offence would not be designed for circumstances inside a hospital where it is much easier to control the situation. However, we can examine that point in Committee. People who go to emergencies to protect us are extremely vulnerable, as Members have made clear. That vulnerability is what we want to deal with; those workers are vulnerable to obstruction and the consequences of obstructing them can be serious. The resources available to workers attending an emergency are not as substantial as those for people treating patients in a hospital; for example, there may be security staff, although it is of course a great pity that most of our A and E departments require security staff. Teams responding to an emergency are very vulnerable and obstruction of them can have serious and substantial consequences. That is the main thing we have to deal with and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West for allowing us to use the Bill to protect people against that obstruction. The Manchester Evening News campaign and other campaigns across the country show that there is a huge public appetite for dealing with the situation.