Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 214F and 214G, in my name, as we move away from the regulation of weapons to retail crime and shoplifting. I will try to be brief. In my 15 or so years as an executive at Tesco and as vice-chair of the British Retail Consortium, I spent many hours investigating and studying shoplifting and what could be done to reduce it. We used staff training, the latest waves of technology and generous business investment to combat it. I was always very worried by the wider social impact, as stolen goods were sold on to fuel drug habits and innocent shop workers were sometimes hurt in the process of trying to stop it. The truth is that these risks and their devastating effect on individuals have become much greater as society has changed and become more divided and less moral, and hence violent crime has become more of a day-to-day occurrence. As with so much else, the long Covid lockdown has made things worse, and the police have prioritised other things. However, this Bill is full of amendments requiring the police to do more. That will put yet further pressure on the police contribution to tackling neighbourhood crimes such as shoplifting and assaults on retail workers, which frighten retail workers, especially in the smallest shops, and lead, sadly, to more shop closures on the high street. For some years I strongly supported USDAW’s campaign for a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker. As the Minister knows, I am delighted that the Bill puts that into law. It is a good day for the Minister, given his USDAW links, and for the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, smiling over there, who represented USDAW so intelligently when I was at Tesco. However, the Bill as drafted does not quite do the trick as it does not cover retail delivery drivers, who have also been the subject of growing aggression. This is a particular problem if the driver has to ask for ID because a juvenile under 18 is taking delivery—a flashpoint, according to a recent British Retail Consortium survey—or if there is a disagreement about what is being paid for and delivered. Last week, Tesco even announced that it was piloting giving body cameras to delivery drivers. Another point of significance is that such drivers are already covered by parallel legislation in Scotland. That is not always a recommendation, but given the national character of much of retail, I hope the Minister will agree that this alignment makes sense and accept my Amendments 214 F and 214 G. I beg to move.