EXCESSIVE drinking in Britain is adding “intolerable pressure” to the work of police officers and other emergency service personnel, a new parliamentary inquiry has found.<\/p>\n
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Harm heard evidence of a female police officer subjected to sexual abuse, while in one area of the country 86 per cent of officers surveyed had been assaulted by people under the influence of alcohol.<\/p>\n
Fire crew and paramedics also described assaults and verbal abuse, including televisions being thrown in A&E departments and a consultant who was kicked in the face.<\/p>\n
One statement given in evidence said: “I can take my team through a licensed premise, and by the time I take them out the other end, they will have been felt up several times.”<\/p>\n
The group of MPs and peers recommended lowering the drink drive limit in England and Wales from 80mg alcohol\/100ml blood to 50mg\/100ml and called for a minimum unit price.<\/p>\n
Fiona Bruce, the Conservative MP who chairs the group, said: “Alcohol-fuelled behaviour resulting in criminality, fires or accidents is adding intolerable \u2013 yet often unnecessary \u2013 pressure on vital resources, and to the work of our emergency services personnel.<\/p>\n
“It should be wholly unacceptable to hear of an A&E consultant being kicked in the face, medical staff having TVs thrown at them, or female police officers being sexually assaulted.”<\/p>\n
Joanna Simons, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said the report highlights the “enormous pressure” emergency service staff face every day. \u00a0“The costs of alcohol harm to the UK are huge, not only in terms of lives lost but also through the significant impact on society and our emergency services,” she added.<\/p>\n
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Harm was set up to raise awareness of alcohol-related issues and make related recommendations to government and other policy-makers.<\/p>\n
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EXCESSIVE drinking in Britain is adding “intolerable pressure” to the work of police officers and other emergency service personnel, a new parliamentary inquiry has found. The All Party Parliamentary Group\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3276,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions\/3276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}