79 people were injured in Houses of Parliament last year

Politics can be a bruising business – as the 79 people injured at the Houses of Parliament last year can attest.

According to documents released under Freedom of Information rules, 60 were hurt at the House of Commons, including a cleaner who needed medical attention in February after she was ‘startled in an office and fainted’. 

The papers, which cover MPs and peers as well as general workers, do not say what startled the employee.

Self-inflicted injuries include bruising to a finger while ‘separating two trays’, a back injury caused by ‘falling backwards’ off a chair and a bruised knee for someone who ‘tripped on a speed hump on an internal road’.

The documents, which cover incidents from July last year to last month, also detail injuries caused by ‘a falling bin lid’, a ‘door that fell from a cabinet’ and tripping over ‘an open drawer’.

Nineteen injuries were suffered at the House of Lords, where the average age of peers is 69.

They include one person who needed treatment after a ‘shelf collapsed, with items hitting person on the head’, and another who cut their finger while ‘cutting thread from a loose button’.

Two people suffered bumps after being ‘hit by a falling radiator cover’, although neither needed medical treatment, and two more had minor injuries after being ‘hit in the face by work equipment’.

A Westminster source said: ‘There will always be slips and trips at work, but the number of injuries in the Commons far outweighs those in the Lords, so I don’t think ‘senior moments’ had anything to do with it.’

19 injuries were suffered at the House of Lords (pictured) where the average age of peers is 69