Protect Retail Workers from Abuse, Threats and Violence.

Enact legislation to protect retail workers. This legislation must create a specific offence of abusing, threatening or assaulting a retail worker. The offence must carry a penalty that acts as a deterrent and makes clear that abuse of retail workers is unacceptable.

Throughout the Coronavirus outbreak, retail workers have been spat at, threatened with infection of Coronavirus and physically assaulted. Since the start of the outbreak, the average retail worker has been assaulted, threatened or abused every 6.5 days, more than double the rate of incidents compared to 2019.

Key workers across retail have been undervalued for too long. We need to recognise the valuable contribution of these workers and ensure they are safe whilst undertaking essential work.

Everyone should feel safe at work which is why assaults on shop workers, doing vital work for the country and the economy are simply unacceptable. The Government pays tribute to all shop workers who have worked tirelessly during the pandemic to keep shops stocked with essential items.

Although the Government is sympathetic to the motivations behind the petition, it remains unpersuaded of the need for a specific offence as there are already a wide range of offences which exist and which cover assaults against any worker, including shop workers and those selling age restricted items. Relevant offences include common assault, actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm, harassment and other public order offences which criminalise threatening or abusive behaviour intended to harass, alarm or distress a person. All these offences already apply to people whose work brings them into contact with members of the public.

In April last year, the Home Office published a call for evidence - `Violence and abuse towards shop staff’ - to further understand the issue of violence and abuse towards shop workers, the measures which may help prevent these crimes and the extent to which existing legislation is being used to tackle them. The consultation concluded on 28 June 2019.

An overview of the responses to that call for evidence, showed there to be a general lack of faith in the way in which these crimes are dealt with either by the police, the shop worker’s employer or in response to shop workers themselves. This seemed to contribute to the view that the response to such crimes was often inadequate and was also a factor that led individuals to decide not to report further incidents. The Government believes that it is this issue that requires more urgent action rather than a change in the law.