Rough treatment

If anyone needed persuading of the deep moral disarray of modern British society, the latest figures on assaults against National Health Service staff should be more than sufficient to convince him. It is not so much their overall number — though 57,830 in a year seems quite a lot to me — that is alarming, as the variation in the way with which they are dealt. The predominant response is, as you would expect, feeble, vacillating, lazy and cowardly: or, if you prefer, forgiving.

I mean no criticism of NHS Protect, the horribly named agency that collected the figures, when I say that these figures raise far more questions than they answer. They do, however, illuminate the general state of confusion in our country much as a flash of lightning illuminates a dark landscape at night.

The number of assaults increased by only 1,112 over the previous 12 months, or 1.96 per cent: not dramatic, but no doubt better than the GDP.

For statistical purposes, assaults on NHS staff are divided into two main categories: those that ‘involve medical factors’ and those that do not. The latter declined to 18,060, or by 19 per cent, compared with the previous year (22,381); but unfortunately the corollary is that the British are becoming more violent under the influence of illness, because assaults that ‘involve medical factors’ increased by 5,433, or 15.8 per cent.

Why this should be so is not explained. It is, of course, much more likely that the increase is the result of a change in classificatory fashion rather than in the underlying reality, because the two categories are highly elastic, to say the least, and of little intrinsic validity.

Just how elastic can be gauged from an examination of the variation in the figures between the individual NHS trusts.