Violence and Abuse towards the Retail Workforce

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist]

I most certainly do agree. My hon. Friend’s experience of visiting shop workers has clearly been the same as mine. She has heard the same stories, so we must do something to make such violence a specific offence.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. This is a massive issue in my constituency. My eldest son used to manage a local shop in the high street of the main town where I reside. He has made me aware of a few occasions when young people have gone in at night to steal items from the store and created a severe sense of fright and fear among the staff. A young girl who worked in the shop, a 19-year-old, was scared stiff—I use those words on purpose.

Does the hon. Lady agree that retail staff often face the most violent torrents of abuse and that more must be done to protect their security? That could include two things: panic buttons or immediate access to the police. Quite often, the police do not attend.

[Liz Twist]

I thank the hon. Member, who is right to remind us that the issue is about not only supermarkets, but small shopkeepers; I think of some of the villages in my constituency.

I want to talk about some of the comments from shop workers in the north-east given in response to USDAW’s survey. I thank USDAW for sharing them with me. These are quotations. One person said:

“I have had name-calling, threats of being hit with bottles, needles and actual assault.”

Another person said:

“Shoplifters swing crutches, punches and bags. They have made threats on my life and talked of getting me jumped.”

Another said:

“There are homophobic insults, intimidating words and being spoken down to.”

Yet another said:

“I have been pushed over, punched in the head and jostled by a large group.”

I am sure that MPs across the House will agree that no one deserves to suffer such abuse simply for doing their job, and that is true whether someone has been working in a shop for 20 days or 20 years.

We should also highlight the fact that retail has a young workforce. More than one in four retail workers is under the age of 24 and more than 60% of new starters in retail are in that age bracket. Indeed, a small but significant proportion of retail workers are aged just 16 or 17. Retail offers fantastic opportunities for young people to get into employment and it is shameful that they might be deterred from doing so because of the abuse that might be inflicted on them. Many workers also have caring responsibilities that they fit around their shift patterns. It is unconscionable that they are experiencing such fear in their daily working lives.

I encountered these stories in my own constituency, but the figures suggest that this local picture is representative of national trends. In March this year, the British Retail Consortium published a report on the scale of the abuse and violence towards shop workers. It found that incidents including abuse, physical assault and threats with weapons had risen from 450 per day in 2019-20 to around 850 per day in 2021-22. It also found that only 7% of incidents of violence or abuse were prosecuted.