Abuse of Customer-facing Workers

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) on securing this debate and on his excellent opening remarks.

Abuse against people in customer-facing roles is always unacceptable. No one should ever have to face abuse in their place of work. The Liberal Democrats were supportive of the measures included in the recent Crime and Policing Act 2026, which introduced the specific recording of offences of assault against retail workers. After years of increasing violence and abuse experienced by those working in retail and other frontline work, the introduction of this offence should act as a strong deterrent against abuse and allow data on such abuse to be more reliably recorded.

Although there has been an improvement on the legal deterrence front and in the collection of data, we need greater enforcement to ensure that offenders are reprimanded for committing acts of abuse. After a decade of cuts to police numbers and resources, people want a return to having a visible police presence in their communities, focusing on preventing and solving crime. Restoring a permanent police presence on our local high streets is the most effective way to deter rogue operators and give people confidence to report illicit behaviour.

This Labour Government promised the public 13,000 more police officers. Instead, officer numbers have fallen. By March this year, there were 4,000 fewer frontline officers than the year before. Over the past 18 months, we have seen not only a reduction of force numbers, but a decline in policing resources. In my Richmond Park constituency, there is now no 24/7 police front counter in the whole of Richmond borough, and the Royal Parks police force has been disbanded, increasing pressure on neighbourhood teams. Just this week, police in Richmond Park had to make an operational decision about whether to provide a presence by Teddington Lock to deter children from jumping off the lock, which puts them at risk of drowning, or to police bonfires, drug use and antisocial behaviour on Richmond Green. I do not envy the officers who have to make those operational decisions, but the lack of funding has put our local force in that position.

What has been most noticeable in our community is the rise of retail crime. The Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to do more to address this.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Domestic abuse survivors who work in retail roles are at particular risk in that their perpetrators often know exactly where they are, which till they might be working at and what their shift patterns are. The perpetrators can continue to perpetrate abuse even while their victim or survivor is at work. Does my hon. Friend believe that the Government need to go even further to provide protections to specifically protect domestic abuse survivors in retail roles?

[Sarah Olney]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention and for all his work. He speaks so powerfully for the victims of domestic abuse, and I thank him for taking this opportunity to raise the issue. I hope that the Minister has heard what he said, because it is an extremely serious point. We should have the victims of domestic abuse at the front of our minds when we think about this issue and the particular risk that it creates for them.

Shoplifting not only causes shops to lose out on sales, with the costs then passed on to paying customers, but means that staff members, often young people, are met with the possible threat of violence. Shoplifting has risen by a staggering 48% in England and Wales over the past five years. Every time I meet the owner of a local store, I am told that shoplifting has effectively become decriminalised. Thieves do not feel the threat of reprisal, and staff do not feel protected by law enforcement. It is incredibly frustrating that the Government have not connected the dots between increased fear and crime and the stripping back of our police forces’ ability to do their jobs.

That is why the Liberal Democrats have been calling for more money for CCTV through loans of up to £6,500 to small independent convenience stores so that they can install modern CCTV to deter shoplifting and make our high streets safer. The installation of CCTV would act as a deterrent against shoplifting and abuse against staff, save money for police forces by preventing such crimes in the first place, and allow them to conclude investigations more quickly because of a stronger evidence base.

Shop owners and staff members are often told by the police that it is not a cost-effective use of resources to follow up on relatively minor thefts, but to every local business and paying customer it is. I urge the Government to recognise the detrimental impact that shoplifting is having on our society and to take this issue seriously.

[Tom Gordon]

Does my hon. Friend agree that police powers could be beefed up through the use of public spaces protection orders? People in customer-facing roles often end up with abuse from people who might have been drinking. Does she agree that we should look at how those powers could be better used, given that communities, organisations, councils and businesses want them to be enforced?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Olney]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent point. We could be doing so much more, not just through the police but across society in different ways, to increase safety on our high streets. People need to know that they are backed up by the police, and that they have a strong and effective police presence to turn to when they have an issue.

The vast majority of abuse that customer-facing staff receive on a day-to-day basis may not come under the authority of the police. That is especially relevant for female members of staff, who will experience crude comments, unsolicited flirting and, at times, explicit harassment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) raised. Having to work under such conditions can cause anxiety in staff members and make them feel extremely uncomfortable at work. A study by Unite found that 56% of women in the workplace have been subject to sexually offensive jokes, 43% have been inappropriately touched and 25% have experienced sexual harassment. In addition, a TUC survey found that 30% of women who experience harassment do not report it to their employer. This goes so much further than just abuse for customer-facing staff; it speaks to a culture across some workplaces in the UK, which we need a much more fundamental approach to root out and change.