Hansard

As others have done, I congratulate Daniel Johnson and his team on their having reached this stage. The amount of work that goes into taking forward a members’ bill is not always recognised. It is a process of which the Parliament can be proud, but it is certainly no easy undertaking. From our work together on the Justice Committee, I know how committed Daniel Johnson is to using the powers of the Parliament to improve the lives of the people whom we represent. That principle is very well reflected in the bill.

That is not to say that I did not initially have reservations about some of what was being proposed. I expressed them at stage 1 and directly to Daniel Johnson, albeit that I was happy to add my name as a signatory to the bill. The draft bill was certainly flawed, but it deserved to be consulted on, scrutinised and improved. I am pleased that that has happened, and I pay tribute to the committee for the part that it played.

Although the arguments for the protections that are contained in the bill were being put long before Covid came to dominate our lives, the pandemic has certainly helped, as others have said, to reinforce and crystallise the case. As in other sectors that are often unrecognised or underappreciated, the true worth and value of retail—and of the people who work in it—have been demonstrated over the past 10 months.

Shops have always been central to the communities that revolve around them. However, that has come into sharper focus of late. In Orkney and, I suspect, in constituencies the length and breadth of the country, local shops have proved to be a genuine lifeline, with retail workers going above and beyond in order to serve their communities—in particular, the people who are most vulnerable and most at risk.

However, as I have said during stage 1, the experience of local retail workers in the early stages of the pandemic was too often not positive. Instead of thanks, they regularly faced abuse, threats and other unacceptable behaviour from some customers. I accept that they are a small minority, but that has been deeply unpleasant, all the same. Panic buying created problems where they should not exist, and staff who were doing their best met abuse for simply doing their jobs.

I am thankful that much of that appears to have died away, and I think that the majority of people have taken steps to redress the balance by expressing their gratitude. Nevertheless, the situation has highlighted weaknesses in the current protections that the bill can, I hope, go some way towards addressing.

The committee heard not only disturbing evidence of the violence, threats and aggression that are faced by retail workers; it also heard concerning reports about reluctance to report such incidents to the police for fear that they would not be taken seriously. That is not acceptable and it needs to change.

When it comes to improvements to the bill, I am pleased that changes have made much clearer the behaviour that is being targeted by the legislation. That clarity will be helpful in improving public understanding and will, in turn, help to ensure greater effectiveness of the protections that are being put in place. Of course, passing legislation will not in itself prevent such problems from arising; however, it can help to raise awareness and to offer greater confidence to retail workers that the concerns that they raise will be taken seriously and acted on appropriately. Those would be no small achievements.

I do not quite understand Maurice Golden’s determination, despite Scotland’s already obscenely high rate of incarceration, to stuff our already overcrowded prisons yet fuller.

I finish by warmly congratulating Daniel Johnson once again, by thanking retail workers in Orkney and across the country very much, and by confirming that Scottish Liberal Democrat members look forward to voting to support the bill at decision time.