Bring back ASBOs to tackle attacks on shop workers says ex-policing minister
ASBOs should be brought back to tackle the scourge of shoplifting, a former policing minister has said.
Hazel Blears, who served under Tony Blair, called for "radical" thinking to bring down the violence and abuse shop workers face every day. A panel at the Labour Party Conference heard retail staff are "under siege" and theft and security costs now add an average of 6p to every transaction.
A retail chief said overstretched police do not even turn up to armed robberies, while security staff are often forced to release thieves because no officers attend.
Ms Blears, who held the policing post between 2003 and 2006, said: "The thing that I'm going to recommend is why don't we bring back anti-social behaviour orders? As the MP in Salford we were run by organised crime gangs, that's what a lot of these shoplifting is."
She continued: "Unless we do some radical things to stop it it's just going to spiral out of control. I know that ASBOs were quite controversial, particularly among the liberal fraternity, but it was one of the things that protected ordinary working class people from being exploited in this way."
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The Labour veteran, who spent 18 years in Parliament before stepping down in 2015, added she was "disappointed" when Theresa May decided ASBOs were too time consuming and expensive, instead introducing criminal behaviour orders to tackle repeat offenders.
But Ms Blears said the burden of proof for the new orders - of which she said just 2,600 are in place - is too high, stating: "There are far few orders because the burden of proof is the criminal standard. On anti-social behaviour it was on the balance of probability."
Paddy Lillis, General Secretary of trade union USDAW, told delegates: "We're facing an epidemic of retail crime." He said threats, abuse and violence against shop staff had shot up by 31% since 2016, and said he is inundated with "heartbreaking" stories - including a recent case where a worker was stabbed in the eye with a screwdriver.
And Paul Gerrard, director of campaigns and public affairs at the Co-Op, said that 1,000 incidents a day are reported across the chain's 2,500 UK stores. But he said that when staff do step in and detain shoplifters, they regularly have to let them go because police don't respond.
"We only report serious incidents but the police don't turn up in 70% of these instances," he said. "Where we've detained the suspected offender police don't turn up eight times out of 10. That's means we have to let the offender go."
Mr Gerrard said a store in Illford, London, is targeted by masked robbers two or three times each week, but said: "For an armed robbery there's no response." He continued: "Shop workers, particularly independent shop workers, are under siege."
Last year more than 342,000 shoplifting cases were reported to police in England and Wales, up from 275,000 12 months earlier. Alex Norris, Labour's Shadow Police Minister, said the party will recruit 13,000 neighbourhood police officers, saying of shop workers; "We owe it to them to have their back."
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