Retail trade union Usdaw has accused the UK Government of playing political games with shopworker safety after the Criminal Justice Bill was dropped when Parliament was dissolved ahead of the General Election.
An amendment to the bill would have made assaulting a shop worker in England and Wales a specific criminal offence. Similar legislation has been in place in Scotland since 2021.
Announcing the amendment in April, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak commented: “Our local shops are the lifeblood of our communities, and they must be free to trade without the threat of crime or abuse.”
He also heralded a raft of measures including the tagging of serial offenders, new community sentencing measures to tackle prolific shoplifters, and a £55m investment in facial recognition technology.
Usdaw General Secretary Paddy Lillis commented: “Last month the Government U-turned on the need to legislate to protect shop workers from violence, threats and abuse, by announcing they would create a standalone offence in their Criminal Justice Bill. This turned out to be a political stunt trying to undermine Labour’s commitment on this. I am now not convinced that they ever intended to follow through on this promise, after failing to support the Labour amendment, delaying the passage of the Bill and then allowing it fall before Parliament closed for a general election.”
Lillis said the Government’s dithering over the years had led to thousands of shop workers needlessly suffering physical and mental injury.
He said: “It is an absolute disgrace to play games with the lives of shop workers, key workers in every community, on the front line suffering unprecedented violence, abuse and threats in a retail crime epidemic. The Tory record is one of effectively decriminalising theft from shops.”
Calling for a Labour Government, Lillis added: “Labour is committed to deliver for retail staff in England and Wales the protection of shop workers law that has existed in Scotland for three years. Labour will end the perverse £200 threshold for prosecuting shoplifters, which has effectively become an open invitation to retail criminals. Labour will provide more uniformed officers patrolling shopping areas and introduce town centre banning orders for repeat offenders.”
