Retail staff assault ‘should be offence’

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Attacks on retail workers should be made a specific criminal offence, a group of MPs has said. The home affairs committee said there had been a “shocking” increase in the level of violence and abuse directed at shop workers over the past five years and employers needed to do more to support victims. According to the Association of Convenience Stores 89% of people working in local shops have experienced some form of abuse, while Co-op has reported a fourfold increase in violent crime between 2014 and 2020. The committee also heard evidence that violence and abuse towards shop workers had worsened during the pandemic. The Usdaw union reported that 76% of shop workers felt the behaviour they had experienced had been worse than usual over the past 18 months. In a report published today, the home affairs committee calls for a stronger policing response; proper recording of violence against shop workers to allow better monitoring of the situation; an “employers charter” setting out how organisations should support and protect staff, including training, reporting, security and counselling; and a new criminal offence “to send a powerful and long overdue message that assaults on retail workers will not be tolerated”. It calls on the government to consult urgently on the scope of a new criminal offence. Committee chair Yvette Cooper said: “During the Covid-19 pandemic, retail workers kept our communities going and they deserve our thanks and gratitude. It is even more shameful, then, that abuse and assaults against shopworkers went up during the pandemic, and it is completely unacceptable that these attacks have become so commonplace in our society.” Cooper said that police often did not take abuse against retail workers seriously enough and workers had been left to deal with trauma alone.