‘Abuse and violence forged darkish shadow over shopworkers – we should change that’

Over the past few weeks, communities across the country have been celebrating the switching on of their Christmas lights.

These lights bring festive cheer and joy to high streets and town centres up and down the land, as children dream of what Santa might bring and families look forward to spending time with the people they love.

It is only right that this yearly event is a source of local pride. Yet, for Britain’s shopworkers, it can be one of the most challenging times of the year.

As we gear up for the festive period, they will be working harder than ever to ensure our needs as customers are met – making sure that we can find what we need and that the shelves are kept stocked. For many, this will involve working overtime and sacrificing time with their own loved ones.

But if this wasn’t enough of a challenge over the last few years a dark shadow has been cast over their work. Today’s shopworkers face an unacceptable and growing level of violence and abuse.

A survey published earlier this year by the British Retail Consortium estimated that there were 1,300 incidents of abuse and violence every single day towards shopworkers. While in the last year, shop theft soared by 29% to a twenty-year high.

Shop theft, which often comes with the threat or indeed the use of violence, is something police increasingly see as being driven by organised criminal gangs. The impact on shopworkers is devastating, harming their lives and livelihoods.

We cannot and must not accept this. This is why this government has made clear that we will introduce a new specific offence of assaulting a retail worker, and end the effective immunity that currently applies for theft of goods under £200. And it is why we are investing millions in a specialist policing team focused on stopping retail gangs.

This funding will improve how retailers share intelligence with policing, to better understand the tactics used by organised retail crime gangs and tackle prolific shoplifters. It sits alongside our commitment to restore neighbourhood policing across the country, putting thousands of dedicated officers and community support officers back on our streets, and ensuring every community has a named local officer they can turn to when problems need to be addressed.

But we must not stop there. To make our streets and town centres safer, and push back against rising levels of violence and shop theft, government and policing must continue to work with retailers to tackle this crime.

This is why I’m delighted that today I’ll be hosting my first Retail Crime Forum with retail bosses as well as police chiefs, looking at what more can be done. This meeting will be a regular one in my calendar.

It will bring together the police and retailers to identify new trends, new tactics and new action required. Because we have to stop this current epidemic of shop theft and violence.

We must be guided by a simple and unshakeable belief: that our high streets belong to the decent, law-abiding majority, not to small gangs of thugs and thieves.

We owe it to Britain’s shopworkers to ensure that in Christmases to come, the shop theft and violence they currently suffer is remembered as the ghost of Christmas past.

And we must work to ensure that their Christmas future is one where they can work free from the threat of harm, focusing solely on what they already do best – making sure customers are happy and their business is able to thrive.