Retail Workers: Protection

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Sir Gary. I join others in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for continuing the good work of our former colleague, David Hanson, in keeping this issue in front of the House.

I have taken part of a number of debates to which the Minister has responded. I genuinely believe he is serious about wanting to tackle the epidemic of violence facing shop workers in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale referenced the figures from USDAW, which is a great campaigning union. It found that there were some 288 incidents of violence against shop workers every day in 2018. I understand that the figures for last year show a further steep rise in the incidence of violence. That only underlines the importance of this debate and the need for the Government to respond appropriately to the rising tide of evidence that action is needed.

I want to focus specifically on the work of Dr Emmeline Taylor, a leading criminologist who was asked by the Co-op Group to explore the context and the reasons behind the growing level of violence faced by its employees. She came up with seven clear recommendations, which I want to put on the record. Will the Minister be good enough to address—if not today, in the future—each of the recommendations?

Other hon. Members have already talked about the need for a specific, standalone offence to give additional protection to retail workers, so I will concentrate on the other six recommendations. The first is a review of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which introduced the £200 threshold that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) mentioned as being a significant problem in creating expectations that people could get away with shoplifting. It would be good to hear whether the Minister accepts that that is a problem, and that a review is under way.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Member’s comments about the £200 threshold. I have raised the matter with my own police force in Humberside. Those officers tell me that they do not treat it as an absolute, and they will treat each case as a matter of priority. I hope that the Minister will confirm that it is vital that that message goes out to police forces up and down the country. It is not absolute, and some cases deserve much more attention than others.

[Gareth Thomas]

It is interesting that the hon. Member says that. I welcome his comments and the conversations he has had. The lack of prosecutions suggests that the issue is still not being taken seriously enough by the Crown Prosecution Service or by the understaffed police forces in our country. I hope that the Minister will be able to demonstrate that that will change.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the £200 threshold is that it puts a monetary value on something when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) demonstrated, the personal consequences of such offences are much greater than the monetary value?

[Gareth Thomas]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fact that post-traumatic stress disorder is being suffered by a number of shop workers who have been on the receiving end of intimidation or actual violence is a powerful demonstration of his point.

Dr Emmeline Taylor recommended a publicity campaign to promote zero-tolerance of violence towards shop workers. That seems eminently sensible and it would be comparatively easy for the Government to encourage that and make it happen. It would be good to hear whether the Minister will support such change. Dr Taylor recommends changing expectations, such that evidence of age should be provided more often to purchase age-restricted items such as alcohol, knives, aerosol paint and tobacco. Again, that seems eminently sensible.

Dr Taylor also recommends measuring hate-motivated offences in shops. Hate-motivated crime was one of the drivers that she identified as being behind the increase in violence against shop workers. Another recommendation was for drug testing on arrest for shop theft and violence against shop workers. She identified the rise in drug use—particularly of heroin, among other substances—as a significant problem, set against the sharp decline in the availability of services to help people deal with addiction. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether the rise in police numbers will be matched by a rise in access to drug and alcohol treatment services, and whether he specifically supports drug testing on arrest for shop theft and violence.

The last recommendation was about streamlining the reporting of incidents to the police and an effort to improve the accuracy of data, so that we can properly understand and, over time, tackle the sheer scale of violence against shop workers, which, as we can all clearly report anecdotally, is on the rise. Without accurate data, that will be more difficult to handle. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale and others on keeping the campaign very much alive in the House.