Shopworkers protection bill passes final stage

The bill creating specific offences to protect retail workers from assault and abuse passed its final stage in the Scottish Parliament yesterday with unanimous support from MSPs, though some lawyers have warned that it will have little effect.

Introduced by Labour MSP Daniel Johnson, the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Bill creates a new statutory offence of assaulting, threatening or abusing a retail worker, and a statutory aggravation to that offence if it occurs while enforcing a statutory age restriction

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."

He added that the bill would 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.