Richard Baker MSP

Speech in the Scottish Parliament

14 April 2010

I too congratulate Hugh Henry on securing tonight's debate on USDAW's freedom from fear campaign—and I pay tribute to USDAW for its great work in promoting such ideas.

It is important to recognise the personal commitment that Hugh Henry has shown, particularly through his member's bill proposal to extend the application of the tougher penalties in the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 to other workers, to trying to ensure that workers are given better protection from assault and injury.

As other members have said, that proposal is backed by Unite, USDAW and a wide range of other trade unions. It was right to create new specific offences for assaulting or obstructing emergency workers, and we are now seeing convictions under that act. As the freedom from fear campaign makes clear, we need to ensure that workers are similarly protected when they are employed in any profession that involves providing a face-to-face service to the public.

Last year, the Scottish crime and justice survey found that, among adults whose jobs involve contact with the general public, 35 per cent have experienced verbal or physical abuse and 7 per cent have experienced physical abuse. When one considers the number of workers involved, that is a huge figure.

In the case of retail workers, the greater demands that are being placed on how they interact with the public can lead to tense, and even threatening, situations. I guess that not many MSPs are often challenged for ID, but such challenges are having to be made more and more. In effect, we are asking shop workers to police licensing restrictions on the sale of alcohol and tobacco. Although that is necessary, shop workers are being presented with the challenge of having to refuse to sell goods to people who might well not be in a sober state—as Margo MacDonald pointed out—but are determined to obtain the goods that they want to purchase. I think that Hugh Henry is also right that when mistakes are made in carrying out that policing responsibility, the responsibility for the mistake cannot rest simply with the shop worker in question. The new responsibilities can easily lead to verbal abuse.

Like others, I have witnessed such situations—indeed, I have witnessed two in the past week alone. One involved someone being refused the sale of cigarettes; the other involved a person who had come into a cafe with alcohol being asked to leave, which ended up in racist abuse. Unfortunately, the new responsibilities can lead to violence as well, which is why tougher penalties need to be in place. The Scottish Government is not always in agreement with us on ensuring that there are adequate penalties for offending, but on this issue I hope that we can achieve consensus.

New penalties are not always the answer; education must be involved, too, as the Community union showed in its campaign on protection for betting shop workers. In retail in particular, we must educate the public about the existence of the think 25 policy on the sale of alcohol, as the motion suggests, and ensure that staff receive appropriate training on how to deal with such situations. We have proposed the roll-out of a mandatory challenge 25 scheme for the purchase of alcohol, covering all retailers. We hope that that will help to change the culture of buying alcohol by making it the norm to prove one's age when alcohol is purchased. Along with education campaigns, that measure will, we hope, reduce the number of assaults on staff.

Unfortunately, education on its own is unlikely to work. That was made clear to me a few years ago when there was a spate of attacks involving serious assaults on bus drivers in Aberdeen. Despite the great negative publicity that was created by coverage of those incidents, there were repeat offences. That is why we need education and enforcement, and a partnership approach on the part of everyone who is involved in dealing with such issues. We must give other workers the new protections that are rightly now afforded to emergency workers. That is the approach that Hugh Henry has adopted in the motion and in his proposed bill, and I hope that Parliament will show its commitment to dealing with such important issues by supporting not only the motion but the proposed bill.

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