Ahead of the Respect for Shopworkers Week 2014 on November 10 to 14, a trade union leader said he was disappointed by a failure of a Labour peer’s effort to stiffen sentences for those who assault workers selling alcohol, after a debate in the House of Lords.
John Hannett, General Secretary of Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) said: ‘I am very concerned but not surprised that yet again the Government has blocked necessary protection for workers on the front line of enforcing licensing laws. On four separate occasions Parliament has had the opportunity to toughen the law to better protect shop workers, but each time the Tories and Liberals have refused to support the amendment. All too often we see criminals who have assaulted workers getting away with cautions or non-custodial sentences.
‘It simply is not good enough for the Government to rely on Sentencing Council guidelines to tackle this problem. The public are not aware of these guidelines, so they offer no deterrent to attackers. Often the judiciary do not get the opportunity to use the guidelines because the police or Crown Prosecution Service have decided against cases going to court. However, we are not convinced that the judiciary are applying these guidelines even when cases do come before them.
‘We need a simple stand-alone offence that provides stiffer penalties for those who assault workers selling alcohol – an offence that is widely recognised and understood by the public, police, CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] and judiciary. Despite this setback our campaign to protect shop workers from violence threats and abuse continues, with support from across the alcohol sales industry.’
In moving the amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock said: “Those who serve alcohol are required by the Licensing Act 2003 to enforce that law. They must refuse to serve those who they believe to be under age, and those who are already intoxicated. They are working in febrile environments and are responsible, like police officers, for enforcing the law. If they refuse to do so, they themselves can face legal action or lose their licences. It is therefore unacceptable that these men and women receive no effective protection from the legal system for that additional service and the physical danger that it puts them in.
“They, like all workers, benefit from sentencing guidelines that makes the assault of a worker providing a public service one aggravating factor, but it is one of 19 aggravating factors, which is seldom acknowledged. This fails to acknowledge that those who serve alcohol place themselves in greater danger, and make a more vital contribution to public order and to public health, than most others in other professions. According to the Health and Safety Executive, alcohol was the trigger to threatened or actual violence in 38 per cent of cases.
‘The current regime has inadvertently produced a system which disincentivises prosecution and ends up being too lenient. At the moment, if a worker who sells alcohol is assaulted, the crime will usually fall into the category of common assault. The problem is that common assault carries relatively lenient punishments, meaning that in many cases the Crown Prosecution Service decides not to bother prosecuting.’
However the Government took the view that there are already offences on the statute book which make it clear that violent behaviour is unacceptable, and penalties to sanction it; also a new offence of assault on workers selling alcohol would single out this type of assault, and not – for instance – an assault in A&E on a member of staff.
