Emergency Workers (Protection) Bill

Absolutely. It is a complete outrage that people who serve the public should be subject to the type of behaviour that has been described in the House today. I shall be proud to work with my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West and, I hope, with Members on both sides of the House to make sure that our emergency workers are safer in future. If we are clear about making a real difference where there is that gap in the law, if we do not over-complicate the issue and if we work with the tools that are already available, we can make those heroes—who save lives and on whom our society depends—safer. If we achieve that, we should all feel proud. My speech has roamed far, partly because I wanted to be generous about taking interventions, for a particular reason. I hope that we can gain the consent of Members on both sides of the House to enable the Bill to deal with a gap in the law. Our debate has highlighted the increasing and tragic dangers faced by our emergency workers, but we will do them no favours if we create a law that raises expectations but achieves little in practice because it is flawed. Let us be honest: that has happened before. The Government cannot therefore support the additional, not necessary, offence of assault. The law already exists to pursue a range of assault offences, and to create specific offences would make for complicated law, which risks having unintended consequences. Sentencing guidelines ensure that the courts must hand out tougher sentences for those whose victims are serving the public. I have outlined the non-legislative measures whereby we can deal with these offences and, we hope, prevent them from happening in the first place. However, there is a gap in the law in relation to obstructing an emergency worker. There is no offence of obstruction in relation to ambulance workers, and I have been able to show the House that the present offence in relation to firefighters does not work as well as we would wish. I am therefore glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West has agreed that he will introduce amendments to deal with this issue in Committee and I look forward to working in Committee with him, and with Members across the House, to bring back on Report a Bill that deals with less but deals with it well. When we come to do that, we can all feel very proud of ourselves indeed and we can ensure that those people, those heroes, upon whom we depend for our lives, will be safer in future. I am pleased to support the Bill.