Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 19 January 2021
I will start the debate with not my own words, but those aimed at Jackie McKenzie, a petrol station worker who simply asked someone to wear a mask. For doing so, she was threatened with the following words:
“I’d get a test if I were you. I’ve got Covid.”
Sadly, her experience is far from unique. Shop staff have been spat at for asking customers to social distance, and stock has been deliberately smashed in retaliation for item limits being imposed. Nor is Jackie’s experience—and that of hundreds and thousands of retail workers—confined to lockdown and the pandemic. Jackie told me that for her, as for countless other shop workers, abuse is now seen as just part of the job—something that each worker is expected to handle every single day.
According to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, 15 retail workers are assaulted on an average day in Scotland. In a given year, one in three will be threatened and three in five will be abused. Those figures have all doubled since the onset of Covid.
As a former retailer and someone who is still connected to the industry, as a member of the trade union USDAW, as a member of the Co-operative Party and as a Labour MSP, I mean not just to make a declaration of interests; I mean to make a declaration of intent. Violence, threats and abuse should not be and should never be just part of anyone’s job. Let us make the bill and the vote on it tonight the first step in saying that enough is enough, that these acts of violence must end and that, when shop workers do their job, keeping us safe and upholding the law, they will have the fullest possible protection of the law. That is what my bill seeks to deliver.
As well as creating a new statutory offence of assaulting, threatening or abusing a retail worker, it creates a statutory aggravation to that offence if it occurs while enforcing a statutory age restriction. The aggravation element of the bill stems from a basic principle: that when people are tasked with upholding the law, they should have the protection of the law.
Shop workers are personally liable for upholding the law regarding age-restricted items. Failure to ask for proof of age can result in fines or imprisonment. However, it is a sad fact that the denial of a sale after a proof-of-age check is the single biggest trigger factor for dreadful incidents—or it was until Covid-19 and the enforcement of social distancing overtook it.
The bill recognises the broad range of contexts in which age-restricted goods and services are sold as well as the changing nature of retail, in that people are now as likely to buy online and have goods delivered as they are to make in-store purchases. The bill defines retail work beyond the retail context, covering those working in bars, restaurants and hotels. Similarly, it will cover those delivering online orders, who are required to ask for identification when dropping off age-restricted items.
The bill will have two additional benefits. It will act as a clear signal of the seriousness with which such crimes will be regarded and it will ensure that we are able to measure such crimes, which it is currently difficult to do. We are able to do so through the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, which is used on average 300 times every single year, but it cannot stand alone, so I was pleased to hear confirmation from the Minister for Community Safety at stage 1 of the bill that the Scottish Government is committed to developing an awareness-raising campaign to coincide with the implementation of the bill. That is vital to ensure the success of the legislation and I would be interested to hear about any further details that the minister might have.
I thank everyone who has worked so hard to get the bill to stage 3. I thank the members and clerks of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee for their diligent stage 1 report. I also thank fellow members from across the chamber for their input and co-operation. I would particularly like to thank the minister, Ash Denham, and acknowledge her constructive and productive engagement on behalf of the Scottish Government. I offer my particular thanks to my trade union, USDAW, as well as to GMB, Unite and the other trade unions that supported the bill, along with the Co-operative Party. I also thank retail groups such as the Scottish Retail Consortium and the Scottish Grocers Federation for being behind the bill from the very start and for demonstrating the consensus between workers and employers on the issue.
Above all else, I say thank you to the thousands of shop workers who have supported the initiative. I say thank you to them for the job that they do, keeping us fed, keeping us safe and upholding the law. Finally, I had better remember to move the motion in my name.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Bill be passed.
17:48