Addressing MPs on the select committee, Joanne Cairns – Usdaw Head of Research and Policy said: “We’ve been campaigning for a standalone offence for many years and we are pleased that the Government has now finally taken action on this. There has been massive support from across the industry for it and there is a clear need for it. We need to look at the detail of what comes forward.
 
“We think it’s really important that the legislation would mirror the legislation in Scotland, in that the scope would include abuse and threats, as well as physical violence. We support wholesale being included, we do have members working in wholesale and we would want them to be protected as well.
 
“The standalone offence would be really important in making sure that these crimes are more visible, making sure we understand the scale of them and that police forces can allocate their resources accordingly. In Scotland the detection rate is impressive at 61.7%, unfortunately because of the backlogs in the courts there is only an 11.6% conviction rate. So that is obviously a wider issue that needs to be addressed.
 
“We have seen that the retailers we work with have put in increased security measures, which we absolutely welcome. They have been investing in security, body cams, panic buttons and those things that are so important. That has to be backed up with adequate police response and that also means adequate police resourcing, including neighbourhood policing and more PCSOs in town centres.
 
“We support Labour’s community policing guarantee, which would include new powers to ban repeat offenders from town centres. We would support removing the £200 threshold on dealing with shoplifting as a summary offence to drive up more prosecutions and demonstrate that shoplifting is being taken seriously. It is not a victimless crime, the victims are retail workers who are subjected to horrendous abuse and physical assaults.”
 
Notes for editors:
 
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk
 
Home Affairs Select Committee hearing – 17 April 2024: https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d8aef271-e4fe-4e93-9a9f-39dace3f7558
 
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion