Speaking after Rachel Reeves addressed the House of Commons, Paddy Lillis -Usdaw general secretary says: “This spending review will help promote economic growth through investment and provide much-needed resources for our essential public services, which have suffered from 14 years of Conservative austerity. Our members are particularly pleased that police spending power will rise by 2.3% a year in real terms over the review period, providing more than £2 billion for police forces. Usdaw is urging constabularies to use this investment in frontline policing with more uniformed officers patrolling our communities and high streets.
“Usdaw has long campaigned for legislative measures to combat the growing problem of retail crime, theft from shops and the abuse of retail staff; that is now being delivered through the Crime and Policing Bill. Today we have heard the Chancellor’s choice to put the necessary money behind these legislative protections for retail workers, to help improve the police response to retail crime and ensure more criminals are prosecuted.”
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
Crime in England and Wales statistics show that in the year to March 2021 (during the pandemic), there were 228,250 police-recorded incidents of shoplifting. Latest statistics show a rise of 127% since then to 516,971 in 2024. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/policeforceareadatatables
Crime and Policing Bill: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3938
Usdaw’s Freedom From Fear Campaign seeks to prevent violence, threats and abuse against workers by engaging the public, shop workers and the Government. www.usdaw.org.uk/Campaigns/Freedom-From-Fear
For Usdaw press releases visit: www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Bluesky @usdawunion.bsky.social and Twitter/X @UsdawUnion