There were more than 44,000 assaults on police officers in England and Wales in 2023, with one in four attacks causing injury to an officer.

It was a nine per cent increase from around 41,000 assaults in 2022 and 48 per cent higher than five years ago.

More officers were assaulted in Birmingham than anywhere else. There were a total of 1,292 assaults on officers recorded in the city. Leeds was next with 759 assaults on officers followed by Bristol with 658.

Rich said the figure for Birmingham could partly be explained by the Federation branch’s push for all assaults on officers to be recorded.

But he said it underlined the need for officers to have access to Taser training if they wanted it.

He said: “We’ve campaigned for assaults on officers to be taken seriously and for them to always be reported.

“The West Midlands has some violent parts and, per head of population, we have the highest rate of knife crime in the country, and officers shouldn’t be going single-crewed – but they are in a lot of cases.

“This is also why we need Taser for all frontline officers, and we want them available for some of our plain-clothes officers as well.

“They’re a vital step forwards in protecting our members, enhancing public safety and upholding the law in a balanced manner.”

Rich said the Federation was clear that Taser-trained officers must not be used as a substitute for police firearms. Indeed, he said there was also a need for more armed support for police officers.

“You see time and again unarmed local bobbies are the first to turn up at an incident,” he said. “We saw it in Hainult in London dealing with a sword attack. You had the Borough Market attack where the officer first on the scene was a local unarmed bobby.

“We saw it in Sydney in Australia where, because the officer had a gun, she dealt with being threatened with a machete differently. Australia has that protection, while our officers suffered serious injuries.

“I’m not naïve to think they’re going to arm us overnight, because they’re not. The next best thing is to have more armed support to increase the probability someone with a gun is nearby if something like that happens again.”