Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. We have taken steps to minimise the risk from transfers. We allow only essential transfers—for example, where courts need to be served and justice must carry on. We have clear policies in place to define the need for essential transfers, and we have our compartmentalisation strategy, which means that new admissions to prisons are kept separate from the general population. We are testing new prisoners and, indeed, testing those being transferred between prisons to minimise the risk of spreading the virus.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab) [V]]

All too often, people who commit retail crime escape a custodial sentence. The Scottish Parliament recently passed legislation that will provide frontline retail workers with important protection from abuse and violence when they serve their communities. Will this Government finally ensure that key retail workers in England and Wales are covered by similar specific legislation?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that important issue. He is right to talk about retail workers being on the frontline. He can be reassured that in relation to offences such as assault and other serious crimes well known to the law, the Sentencing Council has set out guidelines in which it specifically refers to people such as retail workers in an important public service position, which means that the courts should be increasing sentences and finding aggravating factors where shop workers have been the victims of crime. I think all of us in this House share the need to support our shop workers, particularly at this time of covid when they have done an outstanding service to us all.