I thank the committee for its focus and work on my bill and its supportive work on the stage 1 report. I also thank the minister for her constructive engagement.
Amendment 1 refers to section 1(1), which makes it
“an offence for a person to assault, threaten, abuse, obstruct or hinder another person ... who is a retail worker”
as defined in section 5, and
“who is engaged, at the time, in retail work”
as defined in section 6(2).
Amendment 1 removes the terms “obstruct or hinder” from the offence. The terms “obstruct” and “hinder” involve behaviour that intentionally prevents or impedes a retail worker from carrying out their duties. Those are the elements of the offence that have drawn the most negative comment. I recognise the issues raised by the committee and the minister at stage 1. Amendment 1, along with others in the group, removes that element from the bill.
The original intention behind the inclusion of those terms was to catch a situation where, for example, a member of the public refuses to move on after being refused the sale of alcohol, so that the retail worker is prevented from doing their job and moving on to the next customer.
Another example in a similar set of circumstances might be where a retail worker is using equipment, such as a shopping trolley, and the customer refuses to get out of the way. I felt that such types of behaviour would not be caught by other elements of the offence and can lead to escalation. There is a precedent for including the terms “obstruct” and “hinder”; they have been used in other pieces of legislation, such as the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 and the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005. However, having listened to the concerns of the committee about the practical impact of including “obstruct” and “hinder” as part of the offence, and its belief that those words could be open to misinterpretation, as well as the Scottish Government’s concern that such behaviour is too low a threshold for criminal sanctions to be available, I have, accordingly, lodged these amendments.
The Scottish Government also indicated that, in order for it to support the bill, I should remove those elements of the offence at stage 2. I gave the commitment to do so and hence have lodged these amendments to that end and effect.
The other amendments in the group are consequential and remove the words “obstruct” and “hinder” in the other places that they occur.