Retailers across the rest of the UK are calling for the government to adopt legislation similar to recently-introduced laws protecting store staff in Scotland.
The statutes address a stand-alone offence with the goal of shielding retail employees from the increasingly violent situations they face.
Furthermore, data obtained by Police Scotland indicated that since the legislation was passed by the Scottish parliament in August 2021, complaints of assaults on store employees had grown by 50 per cent annually, suggesting that there is a genuine belief in the rules’ ability to accomplish something.
According to data from 2023 that the Guardian has obtained, there were 2,233 recorded attacks up until the end of November, or 203 per month on average. Additionally, there were 2,582 reports of abusive or threatening behaviour between November 2023 and the same month in 2023—a 50 per cent increase.
MSPs overwhelmingly supported the Protection of Workers Act, a member’s bill that was introduced to the Holyrood parliament that established a new statutory offence of assaulting, threatening, or abusing a retail worker.
Many now want to see the Westminster parliament introduce legislation of a similar nature to cover other regions of the United Kingdom.
A standalone offence “is clearly working,” according to Scottish numbers, as stated by the British Retail Consortium. Its most recent crime survey, conducted in the spring of last year and based on self-reports from all around the UK, discovered 850 cases of abuse and violence every day.
A distinct offence would result in a harsher punishment, more deterrence, and the collection of data by the police regarding similar occurrences, “giving them a better idea of the scale of the problem, so they can best tackle it.”
The epidemic of theft, according to the shopworkers’ union Usdaw, has turned into “a major flashpoint for violence and abuse against shopworkers,” and they are thus seeking for a separate offence.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
