Retail Crime Prevention

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson), who is a great parliamentarian and a great champion of shop workers. Like him, I declare the support I receive from USDAW and the GMB.

The first cost of violence against shop workers is the cost to shoppers. My right hon. Friend was right to refer to the work done by the Association of Convenience Stores, which suggested that 7p of the cost every time anyone shops is a consequence of violence against shop workers.

The second cost is the human cost of violence against shop workers. I will tell a story about when I was walking in my right hon. Friend’s giant footsteps as shadow policing Minister four years ago. I addressed the USDAW conference as part of its Freedom from Fear campaign, and alongside me was a shop manager who had worked for 15 years in a particular shop. One night, a group of youths came in and were very abusive towards a black security guard. The manager went over, managed it and they left. The following night, yet more of them came back. When the manager went to the security guard’s aid, because he was being attacked, he was himself attacked so violently that he died. Mercifully, he was resuscitated on the spot by the ambulance service. What was so heartbreaking was that he told a story about how he loved playing football with his son and loved going mountain biking. He said, “Jack, I’ll never be able to do that again.” He is a fine young man, and he is never able to do that again.

We see the consequences nationwide, including on Erdington high street, where there are increasing problems of violence against shop workers and crime and antisocial behaviour. One of the impacts of that is that I get people saying to me, “I am reluctant to shop locally because I fear going down the high street.” That cannot be right.

What can we do? My right hon. Friend has focused on the need for action. First, shop workers are public servants. They are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. Secondly, violence against shop workers needs to be properly and fully recognised in local police plans. The statistics read out earlier are shocking, but not entirely surprising if 21,000 police officers have been taken off the streets. The statistics need to be recognised in police plans. Thirdly, we need more prosecutions, sending an unmistakable message that those who commit violence against shop workers do so at their peril. Fourthly, a clear message needs to be sent by the law. On the one hand, there is the nonsense of the £200 limit—my right hon. Friend ably advocated for tackling that—but on the other, we have a legal framework with three categories of crime and culpability and 19 aggravating factors. We need a specific offence that sends an unmistakeable message.

My right hon. Friend was also right about the importance of preventive measures. My experience is like his: some of those involved in shoplifting and violence are themselves vulnerable individuals and everything possible needs to be done to deter and deflect them from the path of crime, in particular crime against shop workers.

In conclusion, my right hon. Friend was right to make an appeal to Government. There is common ground that such crime is completely unacceptable, but it must be tackled with the urgency it requires, including—crucially—resource and more prosecutions. I hope that when the Minister responds, he says, “We get it and we are determined to act.”