Norman Lamb – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-06-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the timetable is for (a) collection and (b) publication of data on the ethnicity and age of targets, location and outcome of taser use by the police.

Mike Penning

Data is not recorded centrally on the number of times the police have deployed Taser devices on psychiatric wards. A Taser record is completed by police officers each time a Taser is used. However, this record does not currently show the detailed geographical or type of location.

Police Use of Taser statistics are published by the Home Office and most recently on 28 April 2016. These provide a snapshot of Taser use.

We have been very clear that the public need greater transparency and that is why the Home Secretary asked Chief Constable David Shaw to lead an in-depth review of the publication of Taser data and other use of force by police officers.

The review recommended that the police record and publish the ethnicity, age, location and outcome of all serious use of force by police officers, including physical restraint and Taser. Pathfinder forces started to collect this data from April this year, and it is anticipated that the collection will form part of the 2017-18 Home Office Annual Data Return.

A copy of Chief Constable David Shaw’s review will be placed in the House library. The review contained no data on the number of times the police have used Taser in mental health settings.