Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps her Department has taken to help prevent violence against retail workers.

Under the previous Government, violence and abuse towards retail workers increased to unacceptable levels. We will not stand for this. Everybody has a right to feel safe at their place of work and we have long championed specific protections for retail workers.

In the Crime and Policing Bill, we brought a new offence of assaulting a retail worker to protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores. The Bill has now completed its passage through the House of Commons and was introduced to the House of Lords on 19 June.

Given the violence and abuse associated with shop theft, as part of the Bill we will also scrap the effective immunity – introduced by the previous government - to shop theft of goods of and under £200, making clear any shop theft is illegal.

We are providing over £7 million over the next three years to support the policing bodies tackle retail crime, including organised criminal gangs.