Government votes against making violence against retail workers a specific offence

A proposed amendment to the Retail Crime Bill to make violence against shopworkers a standalone offence, was voted against by government last week.

Shadow Minister for Policing Alex Norris, who put forward the proposal, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision.

Labour & Co-Operative MP for Oldham West and Royton, Jim McMahon was also exasperated that the government had not chosen to take the proposal forward, stating that there was “no logical reason for the tories to block it”.

He told his X followers: “Retail workers enforce the laws set by parliament. They deserve the protection of parliament too; as championed by Usdaw and The Co-operative Party.”  

Speaking in parliament last week, Norris put forward a strong case for the amendment. He said: “We are talking about [violence on] an epidemic scale, and it behoves us to take action. Too many staff have given up on us or on the police and are just pricing violence and abuse in as part of the job, which they should never have to do, or leaving the industry and going to do something else.

“The staggering degree of violence and abuse is now accompanied by shoplifting,” he added, noting that new crime statistics from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) showed that shoplifting has increased by just under a third in the last year alone. 

However, Policing Minister Chris Philp MP claimed that there were “a number of potential weaknesses” in the new clause. He stated that shopworkers weren’t the only groups facing this level of danger. “A lot of groups have claims that are just as valid and strong as yours,” he said.

Norris argued that other groups did not suffer the same levels of violence, referring to Usdaw figures that retail workers face 1,000 incidents a day.

Philp also pointed out that “it is already a criminal offence to assault a retail worker, just as it is an offence to assault anybody.”

However, since a protection of shopworkers law was passed in Scotland in 2021, there have been an additional 6,000 investigations of retail crime by Police Scotland, noted Norris. “Paul Gerrard [director of public affairs] from the Co-op Group, whose personal leadership in this area has been phenomenal, said cases of violence in Scottish stores are now followed by arrest 60% of the time, whereas the equivalent in England and Wales is in ‘penny numbers’,” he said. “Something different is happening in Scotland, and my proposition to the Minister is that this clearer consolidated offence is that difference.”

The Labour Party continues to support Usdaw’s campaign to make abuse against retail workers a specific offence.