MPs support retail worker assault laws

A parliamentary committee that looked into shop thefts has come out to support the idea of assaults against retail workers being a separate crime.

According to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into shop theft, there are 17 million incidents each year. However, crimes are under-reported so much that they have a “devastating” impact on the industry and its workers.

The police recorded only 443,000 incidents in the year up to March 2024. While this was the most since records began in 1998, the committee stated that this was probably a “drop on the ocean”.

The committee sent a letter to Dame Diana Johnson (Minister for Policing, Crime and Fire Prevention) saying that the nature of the crime has changed from individualised offences to large-scale organised operations with unprecedented levels of violent.

Shop theft has become a lucrative opportunity for organised criminal networks to make money.

The committee welcomed the new national program called Pegasus, which is designed to combat organised crime in retail.

The government also emphasized its support for a new standalone crime of assaulting retail workers. In July, the government proposed the new offence in King’s Speech.

In Scotland, it is already an offence under the Protection of Workers Act (Retail and age-restricted goods and services Act), which was passed in 2021.

The committee also made several other recommendations to the government. These included phasing-out the term “shoplifting”, as they feel it trivializes the severity of this offence. They also recommended developing better reporting systems, so that staff can easily report crimes.

After reporting an increase in violent crimes against their employees, a number of retailers have already equipped staff with bodycams.

Home Office spokesperson said: “We have taken immediate action by our commitment to abolish the PS200 threshold for shop theft and make assaults against shop workers a crime.

We will also place thousands of additional police officers on the streets and create a Retail Crime Forum to help retailers confidently implement strategies against shop theft.

Lord Foster of Bath is the chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee. He said that the scale of shop theft in England and Wales was totally unacceptable and that action is urgently needed, such as the Pegasus Scheme.

There’s no magic bullet. If adopted, our recommendations should help to tackle the problem, and keep our economy and the public safer.”

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