Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Official Report 455KB pdf

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Protection of Workers (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Item 2 is discussion of the Protection of Workers (Scotland) Bill. I welcome Hugh Henry, who has stewarded the bill.

Today, we will hear the views of two panels of witnesses on the proposals. I invite the members of the first panel to introduce themselves, after which we will move straight to questions.

I am an official of Unite the Union.

I am the Scottish organiser, Unison Scotland.

I am assistant secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

I am the vice-chairman of the Scottish Police Federation.

I am from the Chief Fire Officers Association Scotland.

I will start with a general question that each of you might have a view on. Given the existence of the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, what is your general view on the need for the introduction of a bill to develop that concept?

I will start off, because the STUC was very much involved in the discussions that led to the introduction of the 2005 act. At that time, we had a number of meetings about how far it would extend. Many of our affiliates that did not represent what had been defined as the blue-light emergency services were unhappy about the fact that, despite the number of attacks on and incidents of verbal and physical abuse against their members every year, the 2005 act appeared to provide no protection for that population.

However, we welcomed the package of non-legislative measures that was introduced at that time, and there has been welcome activity in Scotland to raise the profile of attacks against all workers but, in recent years, the effectiveness of the public awareness campaign on the extent of the problem has reduced as the funding for it has been reduced. We still see attacks against the remaining health workers who are not covered by the legislation, local government workers—including construction workers who carry out emergency services—and retail, finance, transport and postal workers. They all face attacks day in and day out.

We must consider how we can extend the legislation to cover verbal abuse, because we often hear reports of that happening. The public awareness of verbal abuse is low, but when it involves threats to individuals, it is a very serious offence. Even call centre workers receive threats from people who say that they know where the worker stays or that they will be waiting for them when they leave work.

We need a serious debate on how we can extend the provisions for emergency workers to all workers who carry out public services.

I hope that the committee can provide that serious debate.

I will add to what Ian Tasker said about the history of the issue and the position that some of the STUC affiliates adopted vis-à-vis the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Bill, which became the 2005 act. At that time, our union argued quite strongly that the bill should be extended to cover public transport workers in particular, and I have to say that the situation is still horrific, particularly for bus workers.

I will describe a couple of incidents to the committee. In Glasgow recently a driver was slashed, and drivers have been punched and spat on, for the simple act of asking for the correct fare. The worst cases that we have heard of involve a driver who was shot with air-gun pellets through his window, and another who was attacked by someone wielding a sword.

A couple of years ago a survey was conducted by First Glasgow, which showed that on average 23 bus windows are broken every night—which is 8,000 per year—causing eye and facial injuries to drivers and passengers. Another survey, by First Glasgow staff, showed that 57 per cent of staff said that they expected to be attacked or abused in the course of their work. That is clearly not acceptable.

When those staff are asked why they have not reported the incidents, they clearly say that it is because they believe that no attempt is made to apprehend or punish the perpetrators. We do not view the bill as something to be used instead of other measures—we have campaigned for years for the installation of closed-circuit television cameras, unbreakable glass and so on—but it is a necessary part of the package if we are to prevent those incidents from taking place.

I urge the committee and the Parliament to recognise that the issue does not stand in isolation from some of the major policy positions that the Parliament must consider. For example, if there is a push—quite rightly—to tackle climate change and improve the environment, it must be recognised that public transport has a role in that. The reality is that people will use public transport only if they believe that it is safe to do so. Given the type of incidents that I have highlighted, there will be a fear among the general public, and unless something is done to address such incidents, people will be deterred from using the public transport system.

The 2005 act has already been mentioned, and I want to provide some context around its use or otherwise in any given year, although it is clear that the situation changes from year to year. In the fire service alone—just to be parochial—we suffer about 300 reported attacks on fire crews across Scotland in any particular year, which is fortunately not as high as the level of attacks on public transport workers.

Conversely, the number of prosecutions in proceedings under section 1 of the 2005 act—which covers police, fire and ambulance services, as opposed to health workers and others—bubbles around the 50 mark. If the numbers for ambulance worker and police attacks are added to the 300 attacks on the fire service—which I am sure makes a significant difference—and the resulting figure is contrasted with the 50 prosecutions under the 2005 act, it seems that the current legislation is not being used as widely as it might be.

Before I summarise our position, I want to say that I fully respect the motivation behind the bill.

The Scottish Police Federation believes that assaulting someone in the execution of their duties is a serious offence, and that the justice system should treat it as such, but we do not think that the bill contains the best way of doing that. We support the common law and think that the Crown and the judiciary are flexible enough to deal appropriately with the peculiarities of each case, bearing in mind that every standard prosecution report that is referred to the procurator fiscal includes a section purely for remarks in which the reporting officer outlines the aggravations to the offence.

We are concerned that the principle of everyone being equal before the law is being challenged and that a hierarchy of victims may be created. We are also concerned about the difficulty of proving motivation. Instead of dealing with the common law, which requires us to prove an assault, a breach of the peace or threats, we will have to find time to prove motivation. We are concerned that our members’ jobs are becoming harder and more time consuming.

I will not go into the figures, although I have them and will gladly circulate them. Figures for police assaults from central Glasgow division equate to every police officer in the division being assaulted twice a year. I want the committee to bear in mind seriously that passing legislation does not guarantee protection from attack.

It would be helpful if you could make the figures available to the committee in writing.

Unison Scotland supports the principles of the bill. Sadly, violence at work remains a serious problem for staff facing the public. We conduct an annual survey on the issue; the new one will be published next month. Last year, 30,000 incidents were recorded by public service workers in Scotland. I emphasise the word “recorded”, because many incidents are not recorded, for a variety of reasons. The systems are too complicated—many staff feel that incidents happen so often that, if they were to record them, they would be constantly filling in forms. I refer only to incidents in our sphere of influence—there are further incidents in other areas.

We see legislation not as the only solution but as part of a three-pronged solution. First, we need campaigns to raise public awareness, to try to make abusing people who serve the public unacceptable in the same way as drink driving is no longer acceptable. Secondly, workplace measures are important. We have made progress in the health service. I am pleased to say that this year local government, which had lagged behind somewhat, has come on board with new guidance that we have developed with colleagues there. We hope to see the benefits of that in the next couple of years. Practical workplace measures are important.

Legislation is the third prong. It is important not just because of the deterrent and punishment elements, but because of the public policy message that it sends. The Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 was an important step forward. However, we said at the time—and have said since in extensive discussions with ministers and officials—that it was too limited in scope. There are provisions to extend the scope of the 2005 act, but it is limited somewhat by its overarching emergency circumstances provisions.

Serious physical assaults should be—and are—dealt with by the common law. However, below that there is a level of incidents—some physical, some of other types—that are nonetheless particularly traumatic, especially for public-facing workers, who are not used to dealing with violence. Hopefully, most members will never face violence—if they are particularly unlucky, it may happen once or twice. That is a hugely traumatic and, usually, costly experience for the public sector, because the people concerned suffer illness and ill health and often take some time to recover from the incident.

I am sure that you will test us on whether the bill is necessary. I am happy to deal with points made by the Scottish Government and others, but we think that the numbers indicate that the justice system does not take such incidents seriously enough. Parliament should show that it is serious about the problem by supporting the bill and sending a clear public message.

Before I open the floor to members, I remind you that it is not necessary for every one of you to answer every question. We are here to hear a wide range of views, but please make your points as specifically as possible.

09:45

I will start by asking for comments from several of you on the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, which it is clear is the model, as it is already in place. David Dalziel said that, although the number of prosecutions has increased under that act, it is still lower than the number of cases that arise. What is the overall assessment by the fire service and the Scottish Police Federation of the 2005 act’s usefulness and effectiveness for your members? I am also interested in the trade unions’ view on how the act has worked and the lessons that it has for the bill.

Firefighters do not—thankfully—suffer anything like the level of attacks that police officers do, but the level has remained static since the 2005 act was introduced. The number of attacks dropped slightly last year, but the figures have stayed at about 300 incidents each year. As another witness said, the vast majority of incidents are—thankfully—verbal assaults, and few result in physical injury, unlike attacks on our police colleagues. Nonetheless, verbal assaults or attempted attacks on crews—whether with missiles, laser pens or bricks, or recently petrol bombs and fireworks—are traumatic, whether or not they result in injury.

Initially, passing the 2005 act raised awareness hugely. That put Scotland ahead of the rest of the UK again in passing legislation to protect sections of the workforce. My colleagues south of the border and in Wales were jealous of that and remain so. However, the act has not resulted in a reduction in attacks. The vast majority of cases that are reported to the police are proceeded with under other legislation, such as that on common assault, reckless endangerment or breach of the peace. The 2005 act is not widely used.

Annually, more than 8,000 offences are reported under section 41 of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967. That section has fallen into disrepute for the rank-and-file police officer, because all that it does is clog up the court system. An offence under that section is the first offence to be plea bargained away. Our experience of such aggravations is that the accused is unlikely to plead guilty to a section 41 assault on a police officer and is far more likely to plead guilty to common-law assault or breach of the peace. The courts and the judiciary do not take the aggravation seriously.

Does any other witness have a view?

The short answer is that people do not know what happens under the EWA because the justice directorate does not keep statistics for people to analyse. In the first year of the EWA’s operation—2005-06—an attempt at grouping incidents by occupation was made, but that was dropped after 2005-06. After that, the categories were ambulance workers and everybody else, which I presume is because ambulance workers formed the largest chunk in the first year. No explanation was given for dropping the statistics, although the committee that dealt with the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Bill criticised the justice department for not keeping those statistics.

The use of the EWA is limited. One reason for that—it also applies to the Protection of Workers (Scotland) Bill—is that the EWA has wider provision. That is partly because the sentencing provisions came into line with the common law. From our point of view, what is useful about the EWA is that it deals not just with physical assaults but with hindering and obstruction. We would like the bill to be strengthened on that, too.

In its submission to the committee, the Scottish Government’s justice directorate says that the Crown Office and procurators fiscal take all matters into account in proceeding with prosecutions and in aggravating offences. Where is the evidence for that? Not one single statistic has been put before the committee to support the argument that fiscals and the Crown Office do what has been said. Such statistics are not kept. In 2004, the Justice 1 Committee asked questions about that and was told that the operational database was being looked at and that improvements would be made. I cannot count the number of meetings that I have had with justice officials over the years at which I have been told that the database would be reviewed and that they would be able to give us the statistics. The statistics have never been produced.

All that the Scottish Government’s submission does is give two anecdotal examples of cases that probably would not be prosecuted under the EWA anyway. In anecdotal evidence, my colleagues in the legal profession—people with whom I went to law school and who are defence agents and fiscals—tell me, bluntly and privately, that an aggravation is simply plea bargained away. In a busy court on a Monday morning, the aggravation might be cited but, if the defence agent said, “Okay—he’ll plead guilty if you drop the aggravation,” the aggravation would be dropped. If we had the statistics, I suspect that they would show that the aggravating provisions are not used much. On that basis, we do not believe that the common law is being used properly, so there are strong public policy and practical reasons for having legislation.

Recently, there have been two concerning incidents of assaults on fire service personnel. One, which was reported in the media and took place in Edinburgh, emphasises the importance of the issue of impeding workers, as it involved the firefighters’ hoses being slashed by attackers. That might not be capable of being classed as an assault, but it is evidence of the firefighters being impeded in their duties. The other incident, which I have not seen reported in the media, involved a youth getting into the cab of a fire appliance and attempting to drive it off. Such incidents are concerning, but they might not be classed as assaults against a firefighter.

I echo the comments that were made about the Crown and the judiciary not taking such matters seriously enough. That was raised in the early days of the non-legislative measures, when we had round-table discussions involving the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and the Crown Office. At that time, it was clear from the discussion groups that we held with workers that, when issues were reported to the police, they were not taken forward for prosecution. Workers sometimes blamed the police for that, but it was the fault not of the police but of the prosecution service.

What we have just heard makes it clear that how these matters are dealt with in the courts is critical to the usefulness of the existing legislation and, therefore, to the usefulness of incoming legislation. Would it be unfair to characterise the comments that we have heard as saying that, often, cases are simply not taken through to prosecution because fiscals either bargain away the aggravation aspect or do not raise it in the first place? If I understood Robert Milligan correctly, he supports that view but comes to the opposite conclusion. In other words, he agrees that not enough cases are prosecuted and taken through to a conclusion, with regard to the aggravation element, to make the law as useful as he would like it to be, but the conclusion that he draws from that is that he does not like the law.

That is correct. If the intention is to make a statement, I would point out that every right-minded person in Scotland already agrees that any assault is serious. That is the bottom line.

It has been suggested that no attempt is made to apprehend these people, but I have yet to meet the cop who does not want to apprehend someone—that is just part and parcel of what we do. I do not see what the bill adds to that.

The way in which we report offences under the common law means that there is sufficient flexibility for the judiciary to deal with that appropriately. As someone said, however, where is the evidence of that happening? I do not think that legislation is the answer, but sentencing guidelines might be. The message that everyone should be free to go about their business without the fear of being abused in any particular way is important, and I support the motivation behind the proposal, but the Police Federation is not convinced that legislation is the answer to the question.

Does the fire service have a view on this issue of aggravation? Does the fact that the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 allows an additional charge of aggravated assault make it easier for the Crown to secure convictions for the common-law offence in the first place?

It has not been our experience that that has been the case. Occasionally, we have to prompt the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to use that additional legislation, just as Robert Milligan has outlined.

“Easier” is not the right word, as that just derogates the whole thing. It seems that there is a much greater chance of success if the common law is used in terms of assault, breach of the peace or reckless conduct, and the penalties that go with those offences can be fairly substantial. The 2005 act raised the issue, of course. However, certain incidents—such as those that Ian Tasker mentioned—are already covered under the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, which is the primary piece of legislation, and therefore no additional legislation was required in order for them to be dealt with.

We work well with police colleagues and the Crown Office with regard to assaults on fire crews, without using that additional legislation.

Might there be a case for making it easier to use that additional legislation, in order to secure more convictions?

If we stick with the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, it would be extremely helpful for sentencing guidelines to be reinforced and awareness raising to be carried out. However, as Robert Milligan said—I do not speak for the Scottish Police Federation, clearly—where there is statute law, the arresting officer is obliged to use that first and, in some instances, it might have less chance of successfully going through the judicial system than a prosecution under the common law.

A common feature of the police and fire service responses is that, for the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 to have more effect, tougher or clearer sentencing guidelines would be required. Do you agree?

Yes.

Yes.

Do the trade unions support that view? If so, does that mean that, if it is to be useful, the bill needs to be clearer about sentencing guidelines from the outset than the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 is?

We need to be a little bit careful, because we are confusing two things. The aggravation is part of the common law, not the EWA. We are talking about the Crown Office guidelines on common-law assault. That is the aggravation for which no statistics are given and nobody can tell us whether it has ever been used or is used significantly.

We represent the third of the uniformed services that are covered by section 1 of the EWA—that is, ambulance workers. It is clear from statistics that we have had from the justice department that the act is being used in relation to assaults on ambulance workers. I know from talking to fiscals that they like the hindering and obstructing element of section 1 of the EWA because it is easier to prove that an accused was hindering or obstructing an ambulance worker who was trying to get to somebody than it might be to prove breach of the peace or common-law assault.

When the charge comes in, it is obvious that colleagues from uniformed services were acting as a uniformed presence. However, the problem for Unison is that most of the victims in the 30,000 incidents that I mentioned are not uniformed public service workers but people who work in care homes, schools or the reception areas of council offices. The public service element may not even be mentioned in the report, so it is not immediately obvious that there is such an element to the incident, even if where it happened is mentioned. That sometimes gets lost in the system, which is why we need better data.

Such incidents are often lower-level assaults than those on the uniformed services and, therefore, not as suitable to be tried as assault cases. They are the sorts of assault that, if they happened on a Saturday night outside a pub in Glasgow, would not get as far as the sheriff court on a Monday morning. However, if somebody is serving the public as part of their daily work, they do not expect such treatment. It is not part of the culture and has a traumatic impact.

There is a difference. The bill is important for the vast majority of our members who suffer thousands of incidents of violence. I understand why the uniformed services take a different view, but we take a different view from them because our members have a different experience.

I am sure that colleagues will follow through the implications of that for Hugh Henry’s bill. In relation to the experience of ambulance staff, does the proposition that the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 would be more effective with more specific sentencing guidelines ring any bells with you? If it does, would that have any implications for the bill?

It does. I would like clearer guidelines not only for sentencing but for prosecution. Nobody knows where the problem is because there are no stats, but my suspicion from talking to people and having looked at the cases—I head Unison’s legal services, so I see all our legal cases in this policy area—is that it is with not the judges but the prosecution process. I would like there to be stronger prosecution guidelines, better collection of data and better training for fiscals. Those are the areas in which I would like the rules to be strengthened.

It is difficult to draw conclusions on the operation of the EWA from the limited statistics. We cannot draw any real statistical correlation from the three or four years of statistics on it, although I notice that the Scottish Government’s submission attempted to do so. However, if you are looking for some statistical evidence, I point out that our survey shows that assaults in the health service have gone down and the EWA covers most health workers, whereas assaults have gone up in local government and the EWA does not cover most of those staff. I do not claim any great statistical correlation any more than I suspect the Scottish Government officials do—it is too early to tell—but, if you are looking for correlation rather than cause and effect, I point out that bald statistic to you.

10:00

Good morning. From your understanding of the bill, what constitutes a public-facing worker? Do you have any examples of such a worker?

The unions’ view is that it is anyone, whether employed or self-employed, who provides a service to the public. They might be a shopkeeper, for example. The method of service delivery involves contact, physical or otherwise, between the worker and the public. We carried out numerous focus-group exercises as part of the initial non-legislative measures and we looked at various jobs including doctors’ receptionists, nightclub bouncers, stewards and parking wardens, for whom there are major problems. That approach came from the Scottish Government at the time, not the trade unions. A public-facing worker is any worker who is involved in delivering a service on behalf of their employer to a member of the public.

As you know, there is a definition in section 1(3)(b), which describes the worker as

“interacting with those members of the public for the purposes of the employment”.

It requires more clarification, as we said in our submission. Although it is fine for obviously public-facing people, our difficulty with the definition is not the interaction with the public but the “purposes of the employment” bit. For example, imagine a housing clerk in a reception area who deals with a member of the public who says, “I’m going to get you.” Most of our members who work for local authorities live in the communities they serve, so it is not unlikely that they could bump into that same aggravated customer in the pub on Friday night and be assaulted or otherwise abused. The argument in court would be whether that encounter was for the “purposes of the employment”. We need to discuss and tighten up the definition. We would like the committee to consider that at stage 2, when we will probably come up with a definition amendment to address the issue. The definition issue does not undermine the principles of the bill, but the definitions need to be tightened up in that and one or two other areas that we highlighted in our submission.

As I read all the paperwork, I thought of an example. If a security worker who is a shift worker is on a day shift, they probably deal with the public regularly. However, if they are on a night shift, perhaps on a building site, they would not expect to deal with the public regularly. Would that shift-pattern worker be covered by the bill?

They would, because they would meet the definition of a worker who provides a service to members of the public. The other thing that you need to define is who is a member of the public. That is the thing about legislation; the rules operate their own lexicon—so we need to define some of the issues. However, there are common-law provisions, such as the concept of causation, that could help you to make the legal link in that regard. We can get round the problems by making definitions a little clearer and drawing on examples from common law or statute. For example, we argued that “the purposes of employment” would fit better into the EWA because we lifted it from the Police (Scotland) Act 1967. The courts are used to using that type of provision, which has been used to protect police officers for many years. We wanted to use a similar provision so that the protection afforded to police officers would be afforded more generally to other workers in the public sector. The bill has rightly used better wording than even the EWA, but you can still tighten up the language so that there is less scope for interpretation that might be unfavourable and exclude people.

One point that immediately springs to mind is that if we are not very sure what the answer is in this committee room, how is a cop who is working at 2 o’clock in the morning in the middle of Glasgow supposed to know? I return to the common-law aggravations. One category relates to the place of the assault, which I would extend to include someone’s place of occupation. Another category is the character of the victim, which I would extend to include the person who has been convicted. Those avenues already exist and are already used.

I will give another example. On the next panel we have a witness from Morrisons. Years ago, I used to work for a couple of supermarkets. When I was thinking about the bill, I took myself back to that time. Someone who works on a supermarket shop floor works with and faces the public, but what would happen if they were assaulted when they had left their station of work and were officially on their break and heading to the staff canteen? They would not officially be working. Would they be covered under the bill?

That is not a problem with the bill. It is fairly clearly understood in employment law that someone who is going for their break is doing so for the purposes of employment. As always with legislation, the issue would be for judges to interpret. There are provisions that need to be tightened up but, to be honest, that one is fairly clearly understood.

In some of the evidence we have received it is suggested that there is already a two-tier system and that, if the bill were passed, there could be a three-tier system. Mr Milligan spoke about a hierarchy of victims. We would have the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 and the proposed legislation, if it were passed, which would cover public-facing workers, but what about someone who works in a factory, shipyard or engineering works, is not in a public-facing role and is assaulted? There are a few question marks on that. Why should those people not be included in the bill?

We would have to extend the example you have used and consider where the assault came from. If it was from a colleague, it is covered under employment legislation. Employers should have the appropriate policies in place to ensure that they can take action against that individual. There are options in other areas of business for an employer to take a prosecution against an individual who has stolen money from it, so surely the employer should be able to seek prosecution if there has been a serious attack by one colleague on another. Other areas of legislation cover situations in which an individual does not provide public services but there is still the likelihood of attack against them.

We must keep the purpose and target of the bill clearly in mind. As Ian Tasker has explained, if someone is assaulted in the course of their work, measures are available right now to deal with that. The bill is trying to address the thought and the culture that exists among some members of the general public that somebody who provides a public service to them is an easy target and, if they do not get 100 per cent satisfaction from that person, they can take out their anger on them and abuse them. The bill is part of that much wider package, which is why it needs to be stressed that it is required.

Stuart McMillan talked about tiers, or levels, of victims and Dave Watson talked about the need for prosecution and sentencing guidelines. High-level campaigns such as the campaigns on domestic violence and road traffic offences, which are also despicable offences, have been successful. The raising of awareness in general is to be applauded. The bill is intended to raise awareness, which is a laudable aim.

We could find lots of examples of groups of workers who would be excluded. As we reshape public services over the next five to 15 years, tensions will rise. There is already the potential for that for a variety of reasons, as people lose employment and so on.

A huge section of our workforce deals with the public by phone. Intimidation and threats of violence over the telephone, in e-mails or in writing have an equally damaging and traumatic effect on victims. There is a spectrum of activity, but the common law tends to deal with most of it. My trade union colleague mentioned employment law, which provides protection across the piece.

I do not think that anyone would argue with the bill—it is spot on—but there is an issue to do with equal application of the protection of the law throughout the workforce.

I am a member of the Parliament’s Equal Opportunities Committee, which is reaching the end of an inquiry into trafficking. Yesterday, the committee heard evidence on the sex industry. Would the bill apply to people who work in the sex industry? Would it encourage people to come forward and complain about issues?

We do not represent staff who work in that industry, so I cannot claim particular expertise in that regard, but it seems to me that some of the tests under the bill would cover people in that type of industry.

An equal opportunities issue that we identified in our submission is that the EWA is drawn up in such a way as to cover male-dominated professions. I think that that was unintentional. The value of the bill is that it would draw in a much wider group and female-dominated occupations would start to get similar protection. In equal opportunities terms, the bill has strong merits.

In written evidence to the committee, the Scottish Government suggested that the bill would not add anything new to existing legislation. The witnesses commented on the issue; do you have anything to add?

Those are the same arguments that the same officials and the legal establishment churned out against the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Bill. I well understand—I am qualified in Scots law—the view about the wonders of the common-law approach to the issue. It can be argued that elements of the bill are covered by our allegedly all-encompassing common-law provisions, but there are areas in the bill and the EWA that are not well covered by the common law, particularly in relation to lower-level offences. We would also like to strengthen bits of the bill by bringing in more EWA-type provisions.

The legal profession and officials missed the point that passing legislation is about not just deterring and punishing but sending out a clear public policy message. Ministers have been promising to extend the EWA for the past two or three years, but they have done nothing about that. Officials promised to produce a consultation paper on extending the EWA, but that has not happened either. Something has to be done. The bill would send a public policy message that the Parliament is serious about doing something about the 30,000 people who are the victims of incidents each year. I would not underestimate the public policy benefit of passing the bill, even if what it does is technically covered by the common law—although nobody can prove that, because they do not even bother to keep the statistics.

10:15

I repeat what I said earlier: we are concerned that the bill does not bring anything new to the table for us—although we fully understand the motivation behind it. Our concerns are about the law becoming more complex. That is not just an administrative matter or an issue of delivering justice on the streets of Scotland; it is even more about the court set-up. We have to review it on the basis of a reducing workforce. I understand the motivation behind the bill, as I have just said, but I do not see what it brings that is new.

I understand Mr Milligan’s frustration, and that of his members, regarding the law not necessarily being seen through to a conclusion. Considering the effort that police officers put in, we can understand why some of them are so aggrieved that those efforts come to nothing. That is the case in other areas, too. Most members here will have constituents who complain bitterly about antisocial behaviour, but the authorities do not use the powers.

I wish to clarify something with Mr Milligan, following the logic of what he has been saying about parts of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 being brought into disrepute and about the emergency workers act. Do you think that the emergency workers act should be scrapped, because it has no value?

That is a difficult question, as we are speaking with hindsight. Our position on the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 is exactly the same position as I have been describing today. The courts do not place sufficient emphasis on what is reported to them. If they did, the full and proper application of the common law would negate the need for any other aggravator or any other act.

Your view on the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 is different from the Government’s view. Your view on the bill before us is with the Government—that there is no need for it—but it is your view that there is probably no need for the 2005 act, whereas the Government believes that there is a need for it and it has extended it and promised to extend it further.

I would not say that I am against the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005. I would not like to see any dilution in it. I am sure that David Dalziel will have a view on that, too.

You say that you do not want any dilution in that legislation. Why should a police officer get protection under the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 but a social worker taking a child into care should not receive protection under the bill?

Because those protections exist under the common law.

But they also exist under the common law for the police officer. Why should the police officer also get protection under the 2005 act?

It is there for the police officer under the common law, as well as by using the act.

So you are saying that there is no need for the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005.

I am not advocating that. I would not want to see a dilution in it.

There is an important point here. The Police Federation does not want there to be a dilution of the 2005 act and it is quite content for the police to continue to be covered by it, but it does not believe that the same type of protection would be necessary, under the bill, for a social worker taking a child into care, for a bus driver in the situation that Jackson Cullinane described or for a shop worker. You spoke about a hierarchy, but you want protection in terms of that hierarchy.

I still think that the protection would exist under the common law anyway.

I am trying not to open this part of the discussion out, but David Dalziel is next.

In the best traditions of the blue-light services, I will come to the police’s assistance yet again. The point is valid. It is not a matter of saying that police officers, fire officers or anybody else has a particular right to more protection. The point about sentencing has been covered a few times already. If the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 and your very laudable bill, Mr Henry, had additional penalties that were reinforced through sentencing guidance and guidance to prosecutors, and if those penalties were widely publicised—that is another key point, connected with the name and shame aspect—in other words, if the 2005 act and the bill had actual clout, that would be in everyone’s interests.

That is not an excuse. I do not want to make the argument that uniformed public services are different from other public services, all of whom, particularly social workers and front-line health care workers—our ambulance colleagues are covered already—are knowingly and almost without option put into volatile and hostile environments. We are no different to them in being exposed more frequently to hostile and violent situations from which we have less opportunity to walk away. We have less opportunity to walk away than workers in static situations such as those in benefits offices who have screens, CCTV and security guards. We cannot take all of that to incidents. The case can be made that there is a difference between us. That said, there should be no difference in terms of the protection of the law. I agree on that.

David Dalziel drew the remarkably important analogy between the issue before us and domestic violence. Over the past 30 years, there has been a change in culture in which we have not simply relied on common law. There has been a battery of measures of the type he described, including sentencing and prosecution guidelines, awareness raising and significant changes in statute. The analogy is a helpful way in which to think about where we are on the issue before us. We are in something of a halfway house: we are in the slightly odd position of people saying either, “Let us step back,” or, “Let us continue to move forward.”

Despite the essential hostility of the prosecution authorities to using—indeed to the introduction of—the EWA, there have been 1,000 prosecutions in a remarkably short period of time. The fact that 1,000 prosecutions have been made in three years suggests a gap that the act was helpful in addressing. The essential question that arises is whether there are further gaps. Self-evidently there must be, given that there are 30,000 incidents. If we are trying to achieve behavioural change, how should we move forward? I invite David Dalziel and Robert Milligan to comment on that.

From the trade union side, Dave Watson made the fascinating point that we have seen fewer assaults at the margins of the health service but continue to see them in local government. Part of the issue is the public perception that there is no sanction against someone who assaults a bus worker at 2 am or loses the rag completely and makes threats against someone because their housing benefit has not been paid. Most members of the public believe that there is no sanction against that behaviour. There are, however, the beginnings of awareness that there is a sanction against, and that public opprobrium will be directed at, someone who interferes in the work of the emergency services of any kind. How can we build a growing awareness of the issue? Will the bill help to build awareness that it is unacceptable to assault people, verbally or otherwise? The public seem to believe that there is no sanction, as do many managers. I will leave it there for the meantime.

A few weeks ago, I was on the train from Glasgow to Paisley at about 7 o’clock. After Cardonald station I noticed that the ticket collector was having problems with a male passenger. As the train drew into Paisley station, the man appeared to attempt to spit on the guard. The train doors opened and the individual walked off the train. He did not run; he seemed to have no perception that he was in trouble. The conductor was left in a state of trauma. He rang the emergency button. The driver came along with the spit kit. The train was delayed substantially. I went to see what was going on. Indeed, I was the only passenger who provided assistance to the guard. It appeared that he had not been spat on—no traces of saliva were found, although we took a swab. The public attitude to the event brought home the situation to me. By coincidence, it happened when we were preparing our evidence on the bill. Once you have had a personal experience such as that, you realise how vulnerable such workers are. The inconvenience to the travelling public was the factor on that occasion. The member is right in what she said on the matter.



The pattern of domestic violence is over a prolonged period. We would not want to equate the seriousness of domestic violence with the seriousness of the attacks, but our members who serve the public are finding that such behaviour builds up over a prolonged period and, if their employers do nothing about it, it has a health effect on individuals. These are not one-off incidents—workers face these incidents day in, day out, and they are looking to the law for protection.

I was closely involved in the EWA—the campaign for it, the drafting and the amendment stage—and I clearly remember being told by the legal establishment and officials at the time that there would be no prosecutions under it. They did not say that there would be one prosecution or very few; they said that there would be none. There have been 1,000 prosecutions, although that is not enough when you consider that we are recording 30,000 incidents a year. It is important to remember that most of those incidents are reported in the local press, and the courts are aware of them. The focus on a particular group of people raises awareness of the issue.

If we are looking for an analogy with domestic violence, it would be that there is a culture—albeit a declining culture—that it is acceptable to abuse people who serve the public. Thousands of our members work in call centres. I have listened to some highly educated and fairly well-off people who think it is okay to shout abuse down the phone. They would not do it face to face, but they think it is okay to do it to a call centre worker at the end of a telephone.

There is also a culture in a number of professions of pressure not to report incidents. We get it in schools, for example, and in social work. In the guidance that we developed for local government, I wrote a case study of a legal case I handled that involved a child in a particular school who should not have been in that school. There was clearly a pattern of behaviour. Although the violent incidents became increasingly serious, there was pressure from the parents to keep the child in a mainstream school. The headteacher resisted moving them until the inevitable happened and a serious assault happened. The director of education said to the headteacher, “Sorry, this child can no longer stay in this school.” That culture in the professions means that incidents are recorded less than they should be and staff are told, “This is part of the job.” That is precisely the culture that used to exist with domestic violence; it was considered acceptable. We changed that culture in domestic violence, but we have not changed it yet in relation to assaults on staff. For us it is a longer-term issue; legislation is not a panacea. We are not claiming that if the bill is passed everything will be all right. You have to do the awareness raising and you have to put in the measures, but legislation sends important messages and you as legislators must send out to the public the important message that violence against workers is not acceptable.

I have a technical point. In its evidence on the bill, the Federation of Small Businesses raised the issue of self-employed workers. Clearly, the isolation of the bus driver at 2 am is awful, but there is also the self-employed shop owner whose shop is open late at night and who is on their own. This is more of a stage 2 issue, but I would like the panel’s views on whether self-employed workers should be brought within the scope of the bill.

The short technical answer is yes, and the way in which to do that refers back to my answer to Stuart McMillan’s earlier question, which is that we have to define in the bill what we mean by the “purposes of the employment”. There are definitions of worker in other legislation that would not cover the self-employed, but we are not bound by them; we could write a definition that covered such workers.

I am keen to explore the gap Dave Watson mentioned. He said that if there was a serious assault it would be dealt with by the common law but that there is a level underneath the common law that is not being dealt with. If a bus driver is slashed with a knife or attacked with a sword, that could be dealt with under the common law, but Ian Tasker gave the example of spitting at a train conductor. While, technically, that could be dealt with under the common law, I would guess that in practice it often is not. Obviously, serious assaults can always be dealt with under the common law. Other than spitting, what acts and types of behaviour do you envisage being dealt with by the bill?



10:30

Let us be clear. In theory the common law covers a wide range of incidents. Even if you just push somebody, in theory that is an assault and, in theory, breach of the peace might cover some other incidents. I say “in theory” because the reality—especially in our cities—is that our courts are busy places and the prosecutors are under enormous pressure. If you go to Glasgow sheriff court on a Monday morning, you can see that.

The reality under our current system is that although, in theory, the law is there, in practice incidents that involve lower-level assault and intimidating behaviour—for example, the person who walks into the housing office and does not get the allocation that they want, the new bath that they want or such like and does not physically assault anyone but makes pretty pertinent threats about what will happen to a member of staff once they get them outside the building—are unlikely to be pursued by the prosecuting authorities. In some cases they may be, but generally they are not. That is the difference.

In theory, the common law touches these things and cases will be pursued when there are serious offences, when the offence is clear and when there are clear offences in relation to uniformed staff and others that have a high profile. The problem arises when it comes to people like our housing clerks, people in social work reception areas and reception areas in hospitals, and porters who deal with the violence in the accident and emergency departments in hospitals on Saturday nights. It is about all those groups of people, who are not the obvious people. In the eyes of the prosecution authority, the incidents are often not serious enough to justify prosecution, but in the eyes of our members they are hugely traumatic experiences and they rightly expect us to do something about them.

Thank you. I will move on to another issue.

We have heard a number of questions about the EWA and its impact. We have clear statistics on the number of successful prosecutions: there were 54 in the first year and the figure has gone up to 301 in the most recent set of statistics. Those statistics can, of course, be argued either way, although the Scottish Government ultimately took the view that we should probably not try to argue the case either way.

What impact do you think the EWA has had on the number of attacks on emergency workers, as opposed to the number of successful prosecutions? Successful prosecutions are one thing but, in respect of the number of attacks, we have heard from the fire service that it estimates the number of attacks to be about 300 a year and thinks that the figure has remained the same over the period. I think the STUC’s submission states that it believes that, on the whole, attacks on people who are protected under the EWA are in decline. It is always difficult to get specific numbers, but can any of you give us statistics, now or as we go forward, on the number of attacks? Such information may have come from surveys of your members and so on. We have heard some anecdotal evidence, but it would be useful to have statistics that are as good as we can get.

It is widely recognised that we do probably the most detailed annual survey and report of assaults on public service workers generally. Obviously, we cover the widest group of workers. Unfortunately, we will not report on the survey until next month, but it will still be relevant, so we will send you our annual report once we get it.

The survey has its limitations. It shows that the overall figure is that there were almost 30,000 assaults and we break the figures down by health, local government, police and other groups, because what we are doing is taking the data from public service organisations that collect the recorded incidents through their systems. The problem with that approach is that it requires the member of staff who has been the subject of the incident to fill in a report on the incident, but a wide variety of reporting systems are used. For example, one local authority requires that a 16-page form be filled in every time there is an incident. You will not be surprised to learn that not many members of staff bother to fill it in. I am pleased to say that other local authorities have better systems and use a relatively simple form.

Other local authorities and public bodies do not do a great deal with the forms when they get them in. One authority, not a million miles from the Parliament building, just sticks all the recorded incidents on a spreadsheet and all you get is a long spreadsheet with names, which are not even broken down by department. I have to say that how that authority makes any risk assessments or judgments is beyond me. We have been fairly critical of that.

There is a problem with how the data are collected and evaluated, and it is difficult to take effective workplace measures if that evaluation is not done.

Having given all those caveats, I can tell you that the data that we receive show about 30,000 incidents in the latest recorded year. They vary from relatively low-level incidents to serious ones, and there is inevitably a triangle with a large number of low-level incidents on the base and some of the well-publicised ones at the top.

As I said, the quality of the data is such that I am always wary about drawing conclusions—I say that every year in the report that I write. The Scottish Government also has stats. It gets them every year, and it can tell us how many prosecutions there have been and how many have failed. It has those data if you want to see them. In fairness, most prosecutions are successful and, ultimately, there are not that many failures.

It is difficult to draw correlations between the EWA and movements in the statistics that we get. There is an apparent correlation in that assaults on health staff, who are largely covered by the EWA, are going down, while assaults on local government staff, who are not covered, are going up. My health warning for that finding is that the health service has had a longer go at introducing effective workplace measures, policies and procedures. For example, it has a common data collection system. Local government does not have that, and it has taken us a number of years to get local government to take the issue more seriously. I am pleased to say that we have published guidance on that this year. I hope that the new guidance, with standard reporting systems and so on, will start to show results over the next two, three and four years. However, the improvement will not be any quicker than that.

You need to conduct a study over a number of years to see where the data are going and how they are collected, and to measure improvements in collection and analysis of data and in the workplace measures that public authorities are putting in place to deal with the issues. If you do all that, you might get a picture of the situation. At the moment, however, for the three or four years since the legislation was passed, data on actual incidents, which are faulty for all the reasons that I have mentioned, are only a broad indicator. I would not draw any hard conclusions from them one way or another. In fairness, I do not think that the Scottish Government is trying to do that either. It is pointing one way and we are using the data to point another, but neither of us claims that there is overwhelming data that points either way.

Your survey counted 30,000 incidents last year. What breakdown do you have of types of incident? You talked about a pyramid.

Sadly, we cannot provide such a breakdown, because there is no consistent method of collecting the data. We ask every employer we deal with to give us its recorded statistics and its recording system. For the reason that I have indicated—everyone collects the data differently—we cannot break them down properly. We can break the information down by employer group, so we can tell you the statistics for health, local government and police, but we cannot break down the information in local government by department. It might be possible in health, but every local authority organises differently. For example, we may get statistics from one local authority from a department that covers social work and housing, but in another local authority social work will be stand-alone or grouped with another service. Therefore, it is not possible to break the statistics down.

We certainly do not have occupational groupings. We have said, to local government in particular, that it is important to have common occupational classifications for the data. How departments are managed is not relevant; the occupational groupings are what matter. If employers could collect the data in occupational groupings, they would be able to target workplace measures at where the vast majority of incidents take place. Some local authorities could not even say geographically where the incidents are. Those are the two pieces of information that we need: occupational groupings and where incidents are happening. If we knew that, we could focus the measures at local level and, in national policy terms, we would be in a position to tell you about the measures that we would like the Government to take administratively, and the Parliament to take legislatively, to address the issue.

I want to echo Dave Watson’s frustration. It is remarkably difficult to deal with raw data and turn it into a more victim-focused input. That frustration is shared in the police.

It is also difficult to measure prevention by looking at the raw data on assaults. Has the number of instances come down? In the case of the national health service, is that because staff are better trained in how to defuse situations? Does having cops stationed in hospitals have an effect? It is really difficult to put a figure on the roles of the violence reduction unit, the state hospital cops and that type of stuff. For me, it is a wee bit difficult to give massive credence to the raw data.

I will add a couple of contextual comments. I agree with everything that has been said about statistics—they can be used any way you want to use them. It is clear that, since the 2005 act was implemented, the severity of violence has not altered much. We still get head-butts, we still get threatened with knives and we still get bricks and other missiles being thrown at people and vehicles.

There are some schemes that we, in the fire service, have found very beneficial, such as intelligence-led projects that aim to reduce the level of risk. During the fireworks period around November our work peaks, just as police work does when the pubs close. There are also certain areas of our society—socially deprived and excluded areas—on which we have the data to support an expectation of higher levels of potential threat to responding crews. We have seen some benefit in using diversionary schemes such as street football schemes, which I know our police colleagues also use, and engaging with communities to target antisocial behaviour. We now see those areas narrowing a wee bit, the threat levels reducing slightly and—which is important for us—the severity of attacks reducing. For example, it has become quite rare for people to aim fireworks at crews, although that used to be quite a common occurrence.

I apologise to the panel for being late. A train was derailed at South Gyle and I have been all around the country this morning. I apologise if you have already answered this question.

I agree with the comments of my colleague, Hugh Henry, and with the analogy that Wendy Alexander drew with domestic abuse. For me, the request that we have received in the written submission from Unison, asking that we ensure that all public sector workers are offered the same level of protection, is the crux of the matter. That is especially the case if, as Gavin Brown was exploring, there is a gap in protection. I accept that there are different levels of risk in different jobs, but there is a question of equity that cries out loud and clear. At the moment, we do not offer all the people who serve our communities the same level of protection. I want to explore with Robert Milligan the question how the EWA protects certain workers while the common law is good enough for others. I am not convinced about the answer, so I would like to explore that. Is there inequality at the moment?

We are concerned that there should be equality for all under the law, but we are creating a hierarchy of victims and we have always said that that should not be the case. Our role, in its most simplistic form, is to collate the facts and circumstances of each case and report them to the procurator fiscal to be processed through the courts. That is probably where our frustrations lie. There should be equality for all, in its purest sense, under the law, and we are against the hierarchy that has been developed. That has been the case since 1997, which is probably when we were first asked about it.

It is about equality for both public and private sector workers who engage with the public in the widest sense. The general definition was not intended to be exclusive to public sector workers; it was to include anyone who engaged with the public. I think that we all agree that the bill is laudable in highlighting an issue, but the question that we all seem to be asking from the blue-light side is whether all the legislation will add very much. It certainly would if there were more severe sentencing and punitive sanctions attached to the offences under both the EWA and Hugh Henry’s bill.

In relation to equality under the law, I can provide a chart to the committee. When we did the initial work on “Protecting Public Service Workers: When the customer isn’t right”, there were focus groups to engage people’s perceptions of who is vulnerable or not vulnerable and who is deserving or not deserving. In that exercise, I was struck by the fact that people accepted that doctors’ receptionists are undeserving yet very vulnerable. If medical staff are protected in their workplace under the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 but receptionists are not, there is an issue of unfairness and inequality in the same workplace, which should be addressed.

Yes. That certainly struck me.

We have received a wide range of evidence from the panel, and I thank the witnesses for providing that evidence. This is the start of a large amount of information gathering. It has been very interesting and informative—thank you for coming. I suspend the meeting briefly to allow our witnesses to leave and the next panel to appear.

10:45 Meeting suspended.

10:49 On resuming—

I remind members that we are somewhat over time.

I welcome the next panel of witnesses, and invite them to introduce themselves and to make an opening statement before we move to questions.

Good morning. I was the subject of a severe assault in my employment. I have followed matters through to Mr Henry’s bill, and have asked to come to the committee to explain what happened. My colleague is from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.

Good morning. I am the deputy divisional officer of USDAW in Scotland, and intend to support Mr Dickson as he gives evidence to the committee.

Can we start by hearing a brief version of the story that you wish to tell us?

Sure. As are people in most stores, we are constantly aware of shoplifting. Shoplifters usually take big expensive joints from the meat department. Unfortunately, we cannot look directly on to the aisle in our store because of where we are situated, but over a period, we became aware of a fellow who seemed to recce the place before taking foodstuffs. He always had the same method of operation, which made him quite distinct, but unfortunately, we could never catch him at it. When we made checks after he had been to the store, we always noticed that stuff was missing.

I had been out of the store on a paid break—I am interested in Mr McMillan’s point about breaks. When I was coming back from that break, I recognised the chap I mentioned. He had the usual stuff over his arm, so I was immediately suspicious. I crossed the foyer with the intention of speaking to him—nothing else—but he must have recognised me. He caused a furore and gave me an almighty push against a plate-glass window before I could defend myself. I slid down the window, hit the metal retaining bar at the bottom of it, and was knocked unconscious. I am not sure how long I was unconscious for, but I remember waking up. Quite a lot of people were around, and I was given first aid. It is ironic that, while people were attending to me, other people were picking up the joints of meat that the man had dropped in his panic. That meat was worth about £80. Many other people do such things, but I am talking about a particular character. He was pursued by the police, but was never brought to justice, unfortunately.

I was concussed and still think back to what happened. I sought legal advice through the union. I know that it is clearly stated that, if a person sees somebody like the man I have described, they should notify security, for example, but when a person works hard and somebody is taking away their financial livelihood, they will act by instinct. In hindsight, I realise that the man could have had a knife, a gun or any other weapon and that what happened could have been more severe. However, it annoys and angers me to know that people are doing such things day in, day out, but few of them end up in the courts.

I support Mr Dickson’s statement. From a union point of view, we find that staff in stores have tremendous loyalty against people who take goods without paying. That is particularly the case in the retail sector. Mr McMillan will possibly have experienced that. More and more of our members are trying to do their bit by supporting their stores and trying to stop shoplifters, but they get injured. Mr Dickson is extremely brave in coming to the committee. Many of our members get injured in their employment and are not comfortable with speaking in public about what happened. As a union, we try to log the statistics.

I would like to make the committee aware of USDAW’s freedom from fear campaign, which we have run since 2002 to raise awareness of the abuse and assault of our members by the public. This year, our campaign is called keep your cool at Christmas. Christmas becomes a flashpoint in the retail world because, as I am sure you know, shops are extremely busy and queues are longer, and our people on the checkouts tend to be verbally abused more at that time of year.

A lot of the legislation that the Parliament has passed has put slight pressure on our members—for example, the alcohol and tobacco legislation that is now in place. Many of the big retailers have think 21 or think 25 projects running in their stores. It is our members at the front who have to ask for identification, and many members of the public take exception to that even though our people are just doing their jobs. Our members support the legislation that the Parliament has passed, but they are being physically and verbally abused while doing their jobs.

Our previous freedom from fear campaign was run in November last year. Our union reps ran a survey and we also ran an online survey. To share the statistics with the committee, 32 per cent of respondents had been threatened with physical violence and 10 per cent had actually been assaulted while carrying out their duties. We equate that to one shop worker in Scotland being physically or verbally assaulted every 15 minutes while just carrying out their job. Those figures from USDAW’s survey tie in with the Scottish crime and justice survey, of which I believe the Parliament is aware. That survey showed that 34 per cent of adults in public-facing employment had experienced verbal abuse and 7 per cent had experienced physical abuse. We find that, more and more, our people are being assaulted while just carrying out their jobs.

Not all our members work in large retail outlets where there are probably better forms of security. Many of them work in small convenience stores with no security back-up, or in filling stations. Another flashpoint is when staff are going through the process of asking for ID or, in a filling station, when they ask someone who drives a motorcycle to take off their crash helmet just for our member’s protection. Those are some examples of the issues that USDAW deals with.

Thank you. Do members have questions?

Like Stewart Forrest, I am impressed with Mr Dickson for coming to tell us his personal tale, because it is not an easy thing to do. What he described is clearly an extreme case.

Will you give us a flavour of your experience in general? Do the statistics that USDAW has discovered across the board for the number of retail staff who have been threatened and assaulted agree with your experience in your workplace? What is the general view from the shop floor of the nature of the threat that your colleagues face and how Parliament should deal with that?

Apart from being a butcher, I am also shop steward within the store. I have to echo what Stewart Forrest said. The majority of the staff are female, and many are the times when I have had occasion to speak to management to try to get some time for female staff who have been upset and are sometimes in tears through verbal abuse from customers. A point was made about the change in the legislation on alcohol and tobacco, and some people will go to extreme lengths to put their point across. There is verbal abuse, but sometimes I feel as though, if there was no counter between them, the customer would be ready to assault the member of staff. It is really quite disheartening.

After my assault, it became clear that, although there is plenty of CCTV in the store, there was none in the area where I was assaulted, so one thing that came out of the assault is that that was rectified.

My real concern is that we, as individuals, come in every day, enjoy our work with a loyal workforce and should not have to take such abuse. I appreciate what has been said about other workers such as bus and taxi drivers and so on. Why should we have to put up with that abuse? We are coming in to do and enjoy our job and that is being taken away from us.

11:00

If legislation was specifically designed to prosecute people who commit the kind of offence that you have described, do you think that that would deter them? Would it put people off making the kind of threats and upsetting comments that you have described?

It might put the odd one off, but I think that you will find that such behaviour is a habit with the majority of the people whom I was speaking about. Unfortunately, given the system as it is at the moment, with overcrowding in prisons, just putting them away is not the answer. We have to find something, and the strength of the bill is that it will ensure more protection and better results.

Is it the union’s experience that employers in the sector support measures to address these issues?

Employers are supportive of putting a notice up in the window saying that they will not stand for any abuse of their staff, but whether they carry that through is a different question. I back up what Ms Alexander said at the committee’s previous meeting: the bill is about raising public awareness of a stronger deterrent.

We are going through the process of dealing with one of our members who was bitten while he was helping his manager to restrain someone. When he went to the police station to have photographs taken of the bite, he asked what would happen to the chap, and the police said that he would probably get a fine or community service. For six months, our member has had to worry about whether he had any infection. Thankfully, he has had the all-clear, but that was an horrific time for that lad. As Ms Alexander said, awareness needs to be raised that a strong deterrent exists. We feel that that approach is not in place at the moment.

On habitual shoplifting, there was a case last week, or a fortnight ago, when various members of a fairly notorious Glasgow gang were brought to justice, but plea bargains were involved, which meant that the penalties were ridiculously low. Can the proposed legislation protect against such cases? That group, who featured on a “Panorama” television programme on shoplifting, were not effectively punished.

Some of the people on the previous panel tried to answer that point. All that we can ask for is strong legislation and for that legislation to be implemented. The previous panel expressed some concerns about whether the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 is being implemented in full. As a trade union, we seek strong deterrents through the courts against people assaulting our members.

The figures that have been given involve around 30,000 instances of confrontation per year, 20,000 of which seem to come from the national health service and local government. Have you any notion of the proportion of the remainder that comes under USDAW’s remit? Some cases will come from transport, which is also seen as a flashpoint, but what proportion comes from the retail area?

On the statistics, the majority are bulked up by the verbal side of things. The flashpoints arise when our members ask for identification, or, if the person is buying alcohol, whether they are buying it for a youth; if so, they will refuse to sell it to them. Some people come into shops with a lot of alcohol in them and try to buy more, and the legislation says that it should not be sold to them. Those are the flashpoints that can lead to assaults. The public needs to know that there is a strong deterrent.

I recollect from my own experience situations in the public service—particularly in transport, where the systems of operation are extremely complicated as a result of privatisation—that have given rise to flashpoints.

For example, a train stops in the middle of nowhere because of a bridge strike—in other words, a lorry has rammed a bridge. Because the bridge is Railtrack’s responsibility, someone from the nearest Railtrack office has to go and inspect it before the train is allowed to go ahead. One can see that, in a crowded train in which the lavatory or the air conditioning is not working, the train staff are at a pressure point in dealing with angry passengers. Such situations are not helped at all by the nature of the command structures in that public service.

It seems that there is some room for improvement in that area, to ensure that such flashpoints do not arise. The obstreperousness of the clientele can certainly play a part in such situations, but there is also the problem of a structure that has a failure built into it.

The panellists are shop workers, so it might be more appropriate—

I cannot comment on the transport side of things, but Mr Harvie’s description sits quite well with me as I can relate it to what I said about Christmas shopping, when people have to stand in long queues. I think that he was trying to say that people get frustrated at the train not going anywhere. Members of the public can get frustrated waiting in long queues, and if they are asked for identification when they eventually come to pay for their shopping, that might be the final nail in the coffin.

In such circumstances, an offender can often pull a particular weight, in a sense, by infuriating the people who are in the queue. The process of apprehending the offender can infuriate them, which adds to the pressure on the staff who are involved.

That is also a concern for security people. I have experience of a reasonably large supermarket where there has been only one security guard, and it is not possible for them to be everywhere all the time.

The security guards get to know who the likely offenders are. If they get caught shoplifting, the easy answer is to say, “You’re barred. Don’t come back.” It is a lot easier to take that way out than it is to effect a prosecution because, at the end of the day, nothing really happens as a result of a prosecution. That concerns a lot of people, given the suffering that they go through. The fact that nothing will happen to a shoplifter makes security guards wonder what the point is of trying to apprehend them.

Thank you very much for giving us your story, Mr Dickson.

After the incident took place, how did your employer behave towards you? Did it give you the support that you needed at that time?

My employer was very good. It made sure that everything was okay. I had to go up to the hospital and so on. Fortunately, my wife worked close at hand. The supermarket made arrangements for someone to collect her and bring her up, and it made sure that we were escorted to hospital. It tried to get an ambulance but, unfortunately, something had happened that day and one was not available, so it arranged for a taxi to take me up to the hospital.

Afterwards, when I came back to work, my employer made sure that everything was okay and that I could come back. I still think about the attack now. To be honest with you, it still gives me the shivers to think that the guy I went up to—it was an instinctive thing, which maybe I should not have done—could have come at me with a knife. I still think about that—it is always at the back of my mind. Having said that, I would not stand by and let it happen again. If I knew that someone was doing something and I happened to be there, I would try to prevent it, irrespective of the situation.

A moment ago, you mentioned the lack of prosecutions and the tendency just to ban people from stores. Do you think that supermarkets and store owners should use existing legislation to prosecute people more often than they appear to be doing, instead of taking the easy option of barring someone for an hour, or however long?

I whole-heartedly agree with that. Prosecution must be seen to be happening. As I said, the easy option is just to bar people. It would not eradicate the problem if the police were called and the prosecution service took serious action against people, but it would make some petty offenders sit up and think about what could happen to them.

When USDAW speaks to companies at the national level, we suggest to them that they take the same route that they take when someone steals. Normally, they prosecute people who steal, whereas they may only bar someone who verbally abuses staff.

We have been given an excellent insight into a particular set of circumstances, which has been valuable for the committee. It was brave of Mr Dickson to come here to talk about his experience; we welcome that. I thank both witnesses for their evidence, which adds to our knowledge of these matters.

11:12 Meeting suspended.

11:14 On resuming—