Abuse of Customer-facing Workers

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) for telling us the stories of this issue with passion, belief and conviction, as he so often does. He brought them to our attention capably today. It is always a pleasure to come along and support him. Indeed, I always do because he brings issues to the Chamber that are pertinent to me, which I will explain in relation to my constituency. It is a pleasure to see the Minister in her place—she is back as well. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), is also here again. It is almost like “Groundhog Day”, only with a different subject. We wake up at 6 o’clock when the alarm goes off, but I digress.

I always give a Northern Ireland perspective, as that is my duty here on behalf of my constituents in Strangford. When we talk about the rise of retail crime and abuse against customer-facing workers in Northern Ireland, we are talking not about isolated incidents but about a systematic, daily onslaught against our high streets. I am sad to say it is at that level in my constituency.

The latest figures from Retailers Against Crime expose the terrifying scale of the problem. Shoplifting in Northern Ireland has surged by a staggering 33% year on year. Let us be clear: this is not petty theft, but highly organised, aggressive criminal behaviour that has caused retail financial losses to skyrocket by some 45%. Far worse, it is not just a financial toll; there is a devastating human cost, as the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) said. That cost is the people who never thought that they would ever be threatened at their place of work, who probably know everybody in the community and who suddenly find themselves being threatened, traumatised and unable to cope. They never envisaged that as part of their job.

The retail union USDAW has revealed the deeply alarming statistic that 18% of shop workers in Northern Ireland suffered a direct physical attack over a single 12-month period. That means that nearly one in five workers went to do their job and ended up being physically assaulted. That is why this debate is incredibly helpful for our constituents and for those who want change and protection for shop workers.

My son Jamie, my eldest boy, was the manager of Shop 4 U on Newtownards High Street. He left that job some five years ago, but at that time he was the manager. It is a very big shop with an off-licence at the end of it. One night, as so often happened at that time, a guy came in, probably high on drugs. He had a knife in his hand and threatened Jamie. Jamie was right to step back and say, “Look, you go ahead.” Why would someone throw themselves in front of somebody with a knife who is perhaps unable to understand their pleas, or who is aggressive enough to ignore those pleas, whatever they may be? Why would someone do that if it is only for a bottle of whisky or gin or a dozen beers? A life is worth more than that. On that occasion they had CCTV in the shop, so they were able to chase up the individual and see where they came from.

My point is that the traumatic effect that that has on people will differ from person to person, character to character and personality to personality. Jamie was probably able to get over it because he is a strong young man. Somebody else who is threatened by a person with a knife may not be able to get over it. What about the ladies in the shop, for instance? What if Jamie had not been there as the manager of the store? I often think of how they would have responded. We look back at those things.

Furthermore, some 60% of all violent incidents, threats and verbal tirades directed at local shop staff are triggered by confronting shoplifters. Physical abuse is one thing, but verbal abuse can be almost as terrifying because of the aggression behind it. Our retail staff have been forced on to the frontline. It used to be a case of, “Let’s go and do me six hours, four hours, eight hours in the shop and fill the shelves, speak to the people, look after the customers.” But now they get threatened and, all of a sudden, their job is not the job they signed up for. They face everything from physical intimidation to the terrifying threat of ammonia and acid attacks. Bleach is used against them as well.

Our official Police Service of Northern Ireland data shows an overall decrease of 2.3% in standard police logs, which tells us a dangerous truth. It is one that the hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned and he is right. That is also my perception in my constituency. It proves there is a massive under-reporting gap: every verbal or physical attack on a shop worker might not be reported to the police. If it is reported to the police, is there a reaction? That is what the hon. Gentleman referred to. Shop workers endure verbal abuse and threats every single day, but they do not report it because they feel the system has abandoned them. If they feel the system has abandoned them, the system has to change.

We cannot look at the numbers and do nothing. Our independent shops have been forced to absorb a massive crime tax just to pay for security. I am the oldest person in this Chamber—I suspect by far—and I can remember going to the shops down the road and there was not a security man in the shop. There was never any need to have a security person in the shop. There was no need for CCTV cameras. A police van was always available, by the way. It was never too far away. It was always on the beat, but things have changed.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will join me in commending the work that organisations such as the Harrogate business improvement district do to support the town centre in Harrogate. It has recently hired a business crime officer who has 30 years’ experience in policing. Having organisations that connect the shops, the town centre, the police and the council, keeping everyone looped together, adds real value to our communities. It helps keep them safe and reduces crime and threats to shop workers.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman always brings something pertinent to the debate, so I thank him for that. That is a positive step forward and probably one of the things that the Minister will respond to when she concludes.

We are talking about absorbing a crime tax just to pay for security when staff live in fear. They need to know that abuse is not acceptable, whether they are paid a minimum wage or £1 million a year. A job should never determine the abuse that someone has. We need to make that point very clear today.

Again, I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly for securing the debate. I look forward to the Minister’s contribution and to the contributions of the two shadow spokespersons and the speakers who follow me.

--- Later in debate ---

[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 ---

[The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)]

Thank you, Mrs Hobhouse. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Members might be pleased to know that I probably will not take all the time available to me—perhaps I will give them a few minutes of their life back to do something else.

I want to start by saying what an important debate this is. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) is absolutely right to bring the issue of the abuse of shop workers to this place. It is enormously important, and many Members of Parliament have campaigned for many years for the legislation that we have just passed, alongside the incredible work of the Co-op, USDAW and others. When I was shadow Policing Minister, I remember introducing a similar amendment to Government legislation and debating it with the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who was the Policing Minister at the time. He argued that there was no need for these measures, because abuse of a shop worker is an aggravating factor, and that the evidence did not support their introduction. That argument was wrong, and I am really pleased that we have passed this law.

It was the right thing to do for a number of reasons. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said throughout his speech, we need to make sure we are implementing the legislation and seeing results, and that we use it now that we have it. It sends a powerful message that we in this place see and understand this behaviour, and that we will not tolerate it any more. It is important that we say that loud and clear.

The speeches made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) were really important and spoke to the nub of the problem. The hon. Member for Strangford said that people feel that the system has abandoned them, and that is right. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), also spoke about the way in which people who live by the rules feel that everybody else seems to be getting away with not living by the rules. That has wider consequences for our society than just the problem of retail crime and the abuse of shop workers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter spoke of a very serious case in which somebody was doused with liquid and then threatened with being set on fire. That is horrific. The abuse that shop workers receive, which was mentioned by the spokesperson for the Lib Dems, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), ranges from those very extreme cases to the abuse that people get every day. I remember talking to shop workers at my local Co-op about the abuse they faced. Someone said, “Well, it’s just part of the job.” No, it is not. It needs to stop and we need to make sure we are doing all the right things.

[Tom Gordon]

The Minister does fantastic work in her area. Will she join me in commending the work that organisations and charities such as Victim Support do to help people who find themselves in the horrendous situation that she outlined and that we have heard about from Members across the Chamber? Will she elaborate on the support she and her colleagues in other Departments give to people who work in shops and other customer-facing roles?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Member is right that Victim Support and other organisations give really important support to people in such situations. Across different Departments, we all have a role to play in trying to stop this abuse and the retail crime that goes alongside so much of it. I will go into that in more detail.

First, I will set out the statistics on shop theft, which drives a lot of the abuse that we see and is often perpetrated by prolific offenders. In the year before we came to power, there was a 30% rise in shop theft, and in the past year there has been a 1% fall. A 1% fall does not sound great, but when we compare it with a 30% rise, it shows that we are completely turning the tide. I know that members of the public will say, “Well, that’s just statistics; that’s not my experience,” and it will take us a while to make people feel safer and tackle the huge problem that we still have. I want to reassure Members that—my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked about this—because of the policing interventions that we have done and because of what a lot of shops have done, we are beginning to turn the tide on shop theft. That is important.

A lot of the larger retailers admittedly have more funds to do this, but the Co-operative Group, for example, has done incredible things to design out crime in its shops, and it has seen the biggest fall compared with other retailers. Lots of others are doing interesting things, whether that is having live facial recognition; designing out the ability for people to get behind the shop counter and steal some of the alcohol that might be there; having cameras on shop workers; or having security people. All those things are undoubtedly making a difference, and so is the ability of our police to respond.

We have been clear with our wonderful police that we want them in our neighbourhoods tackling this type of crime. We have already seen over 3,000 more police in our neighbourhoods, and we have committed to having 13,000. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson talked about police numbers. The previous Government cut 20,000 police and then recruited 20,000 police, but they put 12,000 of them behind desks. Our measure is not about exact numbers—we want 13,000 more police in our communities, and we want outcomes. That is what we are driving towards. There are other things that we can do and that we are doing in this space that will also make a difference, and we will keep striving to do more.

The hon. Member for Weald of Kent talked about technology, databases and wanting to cut bureaucracy for our police. I 100% agree with that. Last week, we launched PoliceAI with £75 million of funding to use AI to take away some of the nonsense bureaucracy that our police have to do. I have given it two first tasks in relation to outward-facing technology: one is to tackle tool theft and the other is to tackle retail crime. There are lots of quite good systems that different parts of the country are using to more easily record shop theft and upload imagery and CCTV. We want to design AI that can read across all of those so that the police can easily see and bring together who the prolific offenders are.

There was talk of prolific offenders in this debate, and it is true that a small cohort of people are responsible for a large amount of retail crime and abuse against shop workers. They are often people with very complex needs—they will have an addiction; they will be drug addicts or alcoholics—and we in the Home Office are designing a programme to target those prolific offenders.

Some areas do that already, and people have been doing it increasingly, but there are things that we can put in place to help us really target that prolific cohort, whether that is providing the support they need to get into treatment or more interventions to make sure they cannot do what they want to. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) said that we should be doing more to use things like orders to stop people coming into a community, or tagging. I think we need to be using all of those more, and we are designing a programme of work to do exactly that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked if I would meet USDAW, and I am always very happy to do that. I have done so many times, but it is probably timely that I meet it again now that the Crime and Policing Act has been passed. He also asked how we would measure progress. We will measure what happens with the absolute numbers and the reporting of these issues, and whether people are reporting—whether that is through USDAW or our links in the retail sector. We will measure it through the crime statistics and what is happening as a result.

My hon. Friend also asked, importantly, why the provision is defined as being just about shop workers and why we did not make it wider to include transport workers or people who work in banks, for example. We deliberately kept it narrow to avoid any ambiguity in the courts. I know people disagree with that, but we just have to agree to disagree; that is what we have done in the legislation. However, if the legislation makes a marked difference, which we hope it will, of course we will need to look at whether the provision should apply elsewhere.

I have met representatives from banks, and I have had conversations about the particular challenges they have. They face the problem of abuse—I do not want to deny that—but the frequent protests they are increasingly experiencing are a slightly different issue, and one that we are talking to them about to try to support them through.

With the number of police in our communities going up; with the new rule that all thefts under £200 have to be investigated; with the new tech, IT and AI that can help us read across all these different systems; with the law in place; with the police giving a strong message that we want to see people punished for abusing shop workers; and with the work that we are beginning to do on prolific offenders, hopefully we will increasingly see results. The fundamental point that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and everybody here has made is that we cannot accept this as normal behaviour—it is not. We will not tolerate it, and we will keep working until we tackle it.

[Tom Gordon]

I thank the Minister for being generous with her time. Will she comment on something that I have witnessed on social media: the filming of shop workers in customer-facing roles to generate content and clicks? That is pervasive and nasty in nature. Does the Minister have any thoughts on what the Government could do to tackle that issue?

[Sarah Jones]

There is a wider question about social media and how it sometimes drives these kinds of behaviours. People are almost goading each other to do more extreme activities—I have heard about that in a number of areas. This week, I was told about a new trend that I find utterly extraordinary: people are breaking into houses, filming someone asleep, and then leaving and putting that on social media. That is horrific. They do not take anything or do anything, but they are basically competing with each other to do that. Clearly, we are having a national debate, and the Government have taken action, about the issue of under-16s, but there is a much bigger debate still to have about social media and how it is driving these kinds of behaviours.

Having said that I would be brief, I seem not to have been as brief as I expected. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly on his powerful speech and on securing this really good debate. He should be assured that the Government are on the side of people who just want to do their job, and who should not be abused while they are doing that job. That is not acceptable, and we will keep doing what we can.

Headingley Incident

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

In just a few sentences, the right hon. Gentleman has made a compelling case for why change is needed in this regard. I cannot go any further today, but I hear what he says, and I share his concern about the fact that people can go online and, with a few clicks, buy one of these items.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

A number of people have mentioned to me that they have been to university in Leeds, or have kids who live in “Below Clarey” in Harrogate and go to university in Leeds. There is quite a high-density student population in the area. What conversations have the Government had with local authorities and other partners to ensure that university students and parents feel supported and reassured? May I also echo the sentiments of Members on both sides of the House who have thanked the emergency services?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman has made an important point about reassurance for the public, so that they can feel confident about going out in local communities. I know that West Yorkshire police is ensuring that through the extra police presence, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) will be working with community groups and the university. Also, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Minister for Security were properly briefed about the incident over the weekend. There is engagement across the board, and all the key stakeholders are part of those conversations.

Child Rape Gangs

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely, and I say with the voice of the victims I have worked with over the years and have spoken to even today that the fundamental that they want is that children who come forward today—to their teacher, their social worker or whoever it is—do not suffer as they did. Keeping our eye on making sure that people are held accountable for the past will deliver justice only if we also look at the now.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

The Minister has outlined money for local inquiries. Is she able to comment on what resources will be made available for people who might come forward as a result of those local inquiries? Obviously, there is a backlog in provision of mental health support, talking therapies and all sorts of resources that people who have been through these horrific experiences may require, which are often provided by local authorities, health bodies and charities whose funding is under pressure. Will she elaborate on that and how she will make sure that victims are at its heart?

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. I remember working in a Rape Crisis centre when the Jimmy Savile scandal was revealed and it was like being hit by a tsunami—the phone lines lit up. As I said before Easter in response to the Jay inquiry, making sure that we have robust mental health support for children who are victims is really important. I also announced that the Home Office would double the amount of money it provides for adult historic rape victims, in recognition that we may bring more people forward and therefore need to improve access to support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I do not want to get into trouble; I would like to congratulate Mr and Mrs Fitzpatrick on the work they have done—we know how important that early preventive work is. That is why this Government are also committed to our prevention partnerships, identifying young people who are on the cusp of getting involved in criminality and diverting them, and putting the resources in to make sure they make much better choices in their lives.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

Harrogate has a wealth of independent stores that attract people to the town from across the region—including shoplifters, unfortunately. I have been speaking with Harrogate business improvement district about what it can do to help tackle shoplifting. It has an increasingly good relationship with North Yorkshire police. What steps is the Minister taking to encourage North Yorkshire police and other police organisations to work with local community and business organisations to crack down on shoplifting?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I visited North Yorkshire last week, and one of the issues there is how well the police are working with communities and the retail sector to start to tackle some of the issues around retail crime. Over the next three years, £7 million will be allocated to support the police to tackle retail crime through the specialist team Opal, which is the national police intelligence unit. That unit is looking at the serious organised criminal gangs that are now involved in retail theft.