Criminal Justice Bill (Fourth sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 14th December 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Good afternoon. We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. We will now hear oral evidence from Kennedy Talbot KC, barrister at 33 Chancery Lane. For this panel, we have until 2.20 pm.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Sir Graham, I was hoping I might declare an interest at this stage. I am a member of USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—as is my wife, and the Committee has a witness from USDAW coming later.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much; that is all recorded. Mr Talbot, may I ask you to introduce yourself?

Kennedy Talbot: Yes. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am a barrister in independent private practice. I am not part of any pressure group; I am not pushing for any particular position. I suppose the only interest that one could say I have and might declare is the fact that at the moment I am not able to be paid out of restrained funds, but if this Bill becomes law, there would be the power for that to happen—whether I would be better off as a result of that I do not know. Apart from that, my only interests are to help the Committee, if I can, to ensure that the Bill operates efficiently and fairly and promotes the orderly dispatch of this business.

[The Chair]

Excellent. Thank you very much. We will start with shadow Minister Alex Norris.

[Alex Norris]

Q43 Thank you, Mr Talbot, for your time and expertise today. Given your admirable record in the proceeds of crime field, I am hoping that you might set out for the Committee what you think of proceeds of crime arrangements at the moment, and then, with particular reference to what is in clause 32, which is an attempt to more tightly define the purpose of confiscation under those arrangements, reflect on your view on that as well.

Kennedy Talbot: Yes. Speaking broadly for the moment and without commenting on the Bill—I do not think the Bill would be a vehicle to make all the changes that might be desirable—the key issue is plainly to investigate and to identify criminal proceeds and then to ensure that they are secure. That is the principal problem: by the time the courts get involved, making orders divesting people of assets, in most cases the assets have long gone. That is if the courts actually are engaged.

As you will probably recall from the report in March by the Public Accounts Committee, looking at the investigation of fraud, something like 41% of crime is fraud, yet it is largely not investigated. Of the 900,000 reports that are made to Action Fraud, only 1% result in any kind of judicial proceeding. That, from the broadest perspective, is where the problem lies—ensuring that fraud and other economic crimes are properly investigated and assets are frozen early. That is the best way to ensure that they are confiscated or forfeited.

[Alex Norris]

Q What do you think about the clause 32 provision to try to tighten up the definition? Will that help to give clarity to the courts about what we are seeking with this legislation?

Kennedy Talbot: I think it may be possible to make amendments to the Bill in two respects to deal with the issue that I have just mentioned. One involves restraint orders. I am sure that the Committee is familiar with the power for the court to make restraint orders preventing people who are suspected of crime, and then charged with crime, from dealing with their assets. At the moment, a statutory proposal in the Bill is that the risk of dissipation factor—such risk needs to be established for an order to be made under case law, not under statute —should be specified. The answer, in my view, is to scrap the risk of dissipation, so that it is not a requirement.

In many cases, what prevents prosecutors from applying for restraint orders is that they feel they cannot meet that test. Normally, that is because the case is brought to them some time after an investigation first started. The defendants are often aware that they are being investigated, and the case law more or less establishes that unless you can show that a defendant is on the point of selling his house or moving £100,000 to the UAE or whatever it may be, you cannot get a restraint order. Scrap the risk of dissipation.

[Alex Norris]

Q You said two amendments. That was one.

Kennedy Talbot: That was one. The other is about receivers. Receivers have always been a very useful tool, in particular with economic crime involving businesses, because they enable the court to appoint a court officer, a receiver—normally an insolvency practitioner—to manage, run and control businesses. That was from the time that a restraint order could be made, so from the very beginning of an investigation. As a result of case law that went to the Supreme Court, however—a 2013 case named for the Eastenders Group—management receivers, as they are called, have dried up. The reason for that is that the Supreme Court held that if the management receiver was wrongly appointed in the first place, the prosecutor had to meet the costs. In that case, it was more than £1 million, which had a chilling effect, so prosecutors simply have not applied for receivers at all.

The amendment would be to make receivers’ costs payable out of central funds. There may be a way to ameliorate the problems that one might have with the Treasury. I do not know whether you know about ARIS, the asset recovery incentivisation scheme, but with that up to half of the recoveries are hypothecated back to the investigating and prosecuting authorities, but they must use them within particular accounting periods. The answer, rather than sending it all back, might be to put a portion into a fund that could be used for those special expenses. That would not cost the Treasury a single penny.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Paddy Lillis, general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers; Paul Gerrard, campaigns, public affairs and board secretariat director for the Co-op Group; and Helen Dickinson OBE, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium. We have until 3.05 pm for this panel. Please could you all introduce yourselves for the record?

Paddy Lillis: I am Paddy Lillis, general secretary of USDAW, the shop workers’ union.

Helen Dickinson: I am Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, the trade body for many retailers in the industry.

Paul Gerrard: I am Paul Gerrard, public affairs director at the Co-op Group, the world’s oldest co-operative society.

[Alex Norris]

Q The panel will not be surprised to hear that I want to ask you questions about violence and abuse against retail workers and retail crime. The Bill does not have very much—or is silent—on the matter. Could you tell us about the scale of the challenge at the moment within your industry?

Helen Dickinson: Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to you today. We are not technical experts on the Bill, but we are happy to talk about the scale of the issue and an amendment that we think could help to address the situation, at least in some instances.

You will hear various bits of data about the impact of violence and abuse on people who work in the retail industry. We compile data. Many businesses, such as the Co-op, have their own data. USDAW has data, as does the charity that looks after many employees who work in retail. All the different sources of data show a significant trend: an uptick in shoplifting, organised crime, and violence and abuse against shop workers and wider retail workers.

For me, there has been a big turning point this year. Businesses such as the Co-op and other frontline convenience stores are often on the receiving end when they ask a customer about age-related sales or something, but it is now many different types of businesses, including clothing, fashion and beauty businesses. It is a much more prevalent issue right across retail, rather than being concentrated on food.

The scale of it is much higher than it was pre-pandemic. The number of incidents of violence and abuse against retail workers has nearly doubled since before the pandemic, from around 450 per day across the country to around 850. I am sure that Paddy and Paul will share some specific statistics from their point of view, but that gives you an idea of the scale. It is an increasingly worrying trend that has a big financial impact on businesses, which we are all paying for in terms of inflation, but most significantly on the people who work in retail, and on customers and their families as well.

Paddy Lillis: Thanks for the invite to the Committee. As part of our Freedom From Fear campaign, we have been surveying our members for 20 years about violence and abuse towards retail staff. The idea that this thing is a victimless crime is far from the truth. Shoplifting has cost £1 billion in the last year—£1 billion for employers for security measures. That is one side of it.

The other side, which I will concentrate on, is the number of incidents of abuse, threats and violence towards retail staff. Do not lose sight of the 3 million retail workers in the UK. They deserve to have the protection of Parliament, the police, the judicial system and ourselves. We have seen an explosion of shoplifting and violence towards staff over the last 12 months. It nearly doubled during the pandemic. The sad part is that these people are working in the community, living in the community and serving the community, and they do not deserve this sort of abuse, but we are seeing an increase. I think 62% of the people we surveyed have been abused—verbally abused. About 56% of them have been threatened and 5% have been assaulted. We had a member who lost his life last August in Andover in a Tesco store, and that is the worst side of it.

We would argue that the Bill is missing a trick here in the sense that it represents an opportunity to include a statutory offence to tackle the violence towards retail staff. It is horrendous when you listen some of the stories, as we have to do every day. It is heartbreaking—from people being spat on, threatened or abused, to being assaulted, having their cars damaged, and being followed at night when leaving their stores. It is just horrendous.

I would say there are three elements to this. We have had the historical issue for many years in terms of drugs and alcohol, with people stealing them. They are probably the most dangerous. On top of that, with the cost of living—I am not condoning this, by the way—people are shoplifting. We have also seen over the last number of years that criminal gangs just see retail as an easy target, because the likelihood of being caught is minimal. If you are caught, the chances are you will probably just get a slap on the wrist. For us, this really is important. We look at the Scottish Bill that came in in 2021. There have been 6,000 additional investigations of retail crime by the police in Scotland, so it does work when there is a specific offence out there.

The other thing I will finish on is this £200 levy, where it is a summary offence—that is, it cannot go to a magistrates court. In reality, the police cannot be bothered—it is not so much that they cannot be bothered, but more because of a resource issue. If they do stop them, it is a fixed penalty notice, and that sends all the wrong signals to the criminal fraternity: “It is probably a fine more than anything else.”

There is an opportunity here, I think, to send a message out from Parliament, from yourselves and from ourselves as employers and trade unions, that this is unacceptable and appalling behaviour, and that we are all on the side of retail workers. Retail workers are in every postcode in the country, and in every constituency in the country, and they do deserve our support.

Paul Gerrard: Thank you for this opportunity. At the Co-op Group, we run 2,500 small-format convenience stores across the country. We have seen a 44% rise in incidents of crime in our stores, a 36% rise in incidents of violence, and a 38% rise in incidents of abuse.

What does that look like? Speaking to some colleagues over the last couple of days, just to get a live sense of that, I heard that a store manager was attacked by a customer “with a knife who went for his throat. Fortunately, the assailant missed my colleague’s throat, but hit him in the collar.” He had to be hospitalised. The individual got a £200 fine. There are two individuals in and around Manchester who are stealing in excess of £180,000-worth of product a year, and by the time they have sold it for a third of the price, they have a pre-tax income of £30,000 each—I am not sure whether they are paying a lot of tax on that. As a former His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs officer, I can guarantee that they are not paying a lot of tax on that. In truth, there is a quite terrifying level of lawlessness out there.

There is another thing worth noting with the current situation. We very much welcome the retail crime action plan, which is a good step forward, but we are a long way away from what it outlines. At present, the police do not turn up to 70% of the incidents that the Co-op reports. We only report serious incidents. We do not report someone nicking a ham sandwich and a can of Coke. We report the serious, prolific offenders, and 70% of the time the police do not turn up. More than that, when we use citizen’s arrest powers to detain the individual offender and call the police to complete the arrest, the police do not turn up on 80% of occasions, which means we have to let them go.

There is desperate need for a reset of society’s view of what happens in shops. If Parliament is going to give responsibility for upholding the law to individual groups—many of these offences are to do with age-related sales—it should give them protection for upholding the laws that it passes.

[Alex Norris]

Q Paddy Lillis talked about the stand-alone offence in Scotland. You were a prominent campaigner for that. What assessment have you made of that, since its inception?

Paul Gerrard: I gave evidence to the Scottish equivalent of this, when Daniel Johnson MSP’s Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Good and Services) (Scotland) Bill was passed. Our sense is that it resulted in the police in Scotland taking incidents far more seriously. It is quite hard to come by data, but the data that I see tells me that for attendance at the scene when we report incidents, Police Scotland is one of the five best forces in the country.

Paddy referenced this: when a report is made of violence in stores in Scotland, the individual is arrested 60% of the time. England and Wales are nowhere close to that; here, it is penny numbers. I do not pretend that this is empirical, but our sense as a business is that the protection of workers Act in Scotland increased the importance of this for the police, and the police have responded. If we could get to the position of 60% of reported violent offences resulting in an arrest, my colleagues would be very grateful, as would Paddy’s members, and all the members of the British Retail Consortium.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

Q It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I have spoken with those on the witness panel quite a lot recently. For transparency’s sake, Paul and I have probably had five or maybe even 10 meetings in the last six months. Paddy, Helen and I met just yesterday to discuss this topic, together with the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).

Helen Dickinson: It was like a practice for today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

I will certainly continue to work with you all, regardless of the details in the Bill, to get the retail crime action plan fully implemented and bring into force a zero-tolerance approach. I think we all agree that that is necessary, and I will do everything possible to ensure that the police deliver that operationally. Thank you for your work in this area, and I look forward to keeping on working with you.

[Alex Norris]

Q One of our witnesses on Tuesday—it has completely escaped my mind which one—said it was very important that retailers did their part of the job too in ensuring that shops were safe environments to work in and not easy to steal from. I want to give Helen and Paul in particular the right to reply on that, because I thought you might want to.

Helen Dickinson: I agree completely with that comment. The reason why over 90 chief executives signed the letter to the Home Secretary from right across different parts of retail was that they are concerned about the fact that they are doing all they can, but feel that there is nothing more they can do. Paddy mentioned some statistics.

How do I describe it? It has two big impacts: one is financial, on the bottom line, how the profit of companies will be impacted unless they do everything that they can to address what could impact their business; and the second impact is on their biggest asset, which is their people, whether that is in absenteeism, morale or motivation to do their job well. Those two motivating factors, from a business leader point of view, mean something to every single business leader that I talk to. Literally, that is probably the thing that comes up most in the chief executive conversations that I have, because they feel that they have done everything that they can and that they are running out of road in terms of things that they could do.

The Minister asked about facial recognition, and I know that that is being explored by a lot of people. There have been various announcements about body cameras. People pay money into business improvement districts and regional partnerships. We have the Pegasus Project, which is trying to get better co-ordination across different parts of the police, specifically focused on organised gangs. That is being funded by retail businesses. They are not handing it all back and going, “It’s someone else’s problem.”

That is my answer to whoever it was. I am very happy to put them in front of any retail business, and I am sure they will be given lot of reasons. Paul, I do not know if there is anything you want to add.

Paul Gerrard: The Co-op is one of the businesses that is funding Operation Pegasus. Over the past four or five years, we have spent £200 million on security measures in our stores. That is four times the sector average. If you go into some of our stores, you will see state-of-the-art CCTV, body-worn cameras and headsets. We have increased our guarding budget by almost 60% from pre-covid days. We are constantly investing. We have had a problem with kiosks, where people jump behind the kiosk counter, often armed, terrifying colleagues who are still in the kiosk. We have just invested heavily in new kiosks to stop people from doing that.

Helen is absolutely right: the retail sector takes this really seriously. We consider the first responsibility to be ours, which is why we invest as much as we do to keep colleagues and shops safe, but we are getting to the point with some stores in the Co-op estate and across retail where it is increasingly hard to work out how to run a store that keeps colleagues safe and can make a commercial return. That will mean that shops will close, and we all see what happens when shops close: communities face tough times.

I have heard the police express that idea that we are not doing anything. They have had a similar, less-than-polite response from me when they have said it, because it is patently untrue.

Paddy Lillis: It is 21st-century Britain, and we have retail workers with body cams on—it sounds like a war zone. At the time, we are trying to get things right and get people back into the towns and city centres, but we are helpless. It is a societal problem, something we all need to work towards addressing. We must put the support we need behind retail staff and businesses. I have worked with them. Security measures just last year cost £1 billion, with more and more going in, but somewhere along the line we all pay for that. It is a massive problem that has to be addressed.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Q I am interested in the answer that Helen gave to the Minister about why retail workers should be a special case. I wonder if you would speak a little more about that. My understanding is that attacks on teachers, doctors, leisure staff, pub staff or whatever have not increased in particular in recent times, whereas we have seen this tremendous surge not only in organised crime in shops, but in assaults on retail workers.

The reason why the Government—rightly—responded to proposed changes for emergency workers was that we had seen a huge increase in activity: attacks on vehicles, on people, and everything else associated with that. Helen, would you like to talk a little bit more about that, and just clarify that it is also your understanding that it has soared in the retail sector, whereas some of the other categories that the Minister referred to have, in fact, remained relatively static?

Helen Dickinson: I think Paul summed it up. I cannot comment on behalf of other industries, because I am not close to what might be happening. I engage a lot with my peer group across different sectors, and it does not come up in the same way as it does when engaging with my members.

Paddy Lillis: Retail is an easy target for people. It is an easy way to make money, as Paul outlined earlier. In today’s climate, as I said, there are three areas: the cost of living, addiction to alcohol and drugs, and now the criminal gang element. The retailers rightly told me that this is a golden quarter. It is a golden quarter as well for the criminal gangs, because they are in there robbing the shops under the cover of thousands of people shopping every day.

Paul Gerrard: If you were to ask people who have been in retail for decades, nobody would say they have seen anything like this, even during covid. No one has seen this scale of crime and the—often weaponised —violence and abuse that goes with that. It is out of control. We released CCTV footage earlier this summer, and it is like a riot trying to get into some of our stores, because people are intent on stealing and causing violence and abuse. I do not think anyone in retail—Paddy has been in and around retail for much longer than me—has seen it like this before.

Helen Dickinson: Businesses such as the Co-op—in convenience— have often been at the frontline, because there is that proof of age required when somebody is buying alcohol or cigarettes or whatever else it might be. He is seeing that escalation, but there are other sectors that would never have raised this as an issue now bringing it up as the most significant thing impacting their business. One of my members is a beauty business with only one or two staff members in its stores. It has the same organised gang turning up, week in week out, using abuse and violence to basically get the staff to step back so that they can literally just sweep the whole stock. A business like that is potentially going to shut up shop, because it is not worth it in terms of loss. I do not know if we have quite answered your question.