Paddy Lillis, Paul Gerrard and Helen Dickinson OBE gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from Paddy Lillis, general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers; Paul Gerrard, campaigns, public affairs and board secretariat director for the Co-op Group; and Helen Dickinson OBE, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium. We have until 3.05 pm for this panel. Please could you all introduce yourselves for the record?

Paddy Lillis:

I am Paddy Lillis, general secretary of USDAW, the shop workers’ union.

Helen Dickinson:

I am Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, the trade body for many retailers in the industry.

Paul Gerrard:

I am Paul Gerrard, public affairs director at the Co-op Group, the world’s oldest co-operative society.

Q The panel will not be surprised to hear that I want to ask you questions about violence and abuse against retail workers and retail crime. The Bill does not have very much—or is silent—on the matter. Could you tell us about the scale of the challenge at the moment within your industry?

Helen Dickinson:

Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to you today. We are not technical experts on the Bill, but we are happy to talk about the scale of the issue and an amendment that we think could help to address the situation, at least in some instances.

You will hear various bits of data about the impact of violence and abuse on people who work in the retail industry. We compile data. Many businesses, such as the Co-op, have their own data. USDAW has data, as does the charity that looks after many employees who work in retail. All the different sources of data show a significant trend: an uptick in shoplifting, organised crime, and violence and abuse against shop workers and wider retail workers.

For me, there has been a big turning point this year. Businesses such as the Co-op and other frontline convenience stores are often on the receiving end when they ask a customer about age-related sales or something, but it is now many different types of businesses, including clothing, fashion and beauty businesses. It is a much more prevalent issue right across retail, rather than being concentrated on food.

The scale of it is much higher than it was pre-pandemic. The number of incidents of violence and abuse against retail workers has nearly doubled since before the pandemic, from around 450 per day across the country to around 850. I am sure that Paddy and Paul will share some specific statistics from their point of view, but that gives you an idea of the scale. It is an increasingly worrying trend that has a big financial impact on businesses, which we are all paying for in terms of inflation, but most significantly on the people who work in retail, and on customers and their families as well.

Paddy Lillis:

Thanks for the invite to the Committee. As part of our Freedom From Fear campaign, we have been surveying our members for 20 years about violence and abuse towards retail staff. The idea that this thing is a victimless crime is far from the truth. Shoplifting has cost £1 billion in the last year—£1 billion for employers for security measures. That is one side of it.

The other side, which I will concentrate on, is the number of incidents of abuse, threats and violence towards retail staff. Do not lose sight of the 3 million retail workers in the UK. They deserve to have the protection of Parliament, the police, the judicial system and ourselves. We have seen an explosion of shoplifting and violence towards staff over the last 12 months. It nearly doubled during the pandemic. The sad part is that these people are working in the community, living in the community and serving the community, and they do not deserve this sort of abuse, but we are seeing an increase. I think 62% of the people we surveyed have been abused—verbally abused. About 56% of them have been threatened and 5% have been assaulted. We had a member who lost his life last August in Andover in a Tesco store, and that is the worst side of it.

We would argue that the Bill is missing a trick here in the sense that it represents an opportunity to include a statutory offence to tackle the violence towards retail staff. It is horrendous when you listen some of the stories, as we have to do every day. It is heartbreaking—from people being spat on, threatened or abused, to being assaulted, having their cars damaged, and being followed at night when leaving their stores. It is just horrendous.

I would say there are three elements to this. We have had the historical issue for many years in terms of drugs and alcohol, with people stealing them. They are probably the most dangerous. On top of that, with the cost of living—I am not condoning this, by the way—people are shoplifting. We have also seen over the last number of years that criminal gangs just see retail as an easy target, because the likelihood of being caught is minimal. If you are caught, the chances are you will probably just get a slap on the wrist. For us, this really is important. We look at the Scottish Bill that came in in 2021. There have been 6,000 additional investigations of retail crime by the police in Scotland, so it does work when there is a specific offence out there.

The other thing I will finish on is this £200 levy, where it is a summary offence—that is, it cannot go to a magistrates court. In reality, the police cannot be bothered—it is not so much that they cannot be bothered, but more because of a resource issue. If they do stop them, it is a fixed penalty notice, and that sends all the wrong signals to the criminal fraternity: “It is probably a fine more than anything else.”

There is an opportunity here, I think, to send a message out from Parliament, from yourselves and from ourselves as employers and trade unions, that this is unacceptable and appalling behaviour, and that we are all on the side of retail workers. Retail workers are in every postcode in the country, and in every constituency in the country, and they do deserve our support.

Paul Gerrard:

Thank you for this opportunity. At the Co-op Group, we run 2,500 small-format convenience stores across the country. We have seen a 44% rise in incidents of crime in our stores, a 36% rise in incidents of violence, and a 38% rise in incidents of abuse.

What does that look like? Speaking to some colleagues over the last couple of days, just to get a live sense of that, I heard that a store manager was attacked by a customer “with a knife who went for his throat. Fortunately, the assailant missed my colleague’s throat, but hit him in the collar.” He had to be hospitalised. The individual got a £200 fine. There are two individuals in and around Manchester who are stealing in excess of £180,000-worth of product a year, and by the time they have sold it for a third of the price, they have a pre-tax income of £30,000 each—I am not sure whether they are paying a lot of tax on that. As a former His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs officer, I can guarantee that they are not paying a lot of tax on that. In truth, there is a quite terrifying level of lawlessness out there.

There is another thing worth noting with the current situation. We very much welcome the retail crime action plan, which is a good step forward, but we are a long way away from what it outlines. At present, the police do not turn up to 70% of the incidents that the Co-op reports. We only report serious incidents. We do not report someone nicking a ham sandwich and a can of Coke. We report the serious, prolific offenders, and 70% of the time the police do not turn up. More than that, when we use citizen’s arrest powers to detain the individual offender and call the police to complete the arrest, the police do not turn up on 80% of occasions, which means we have to let them go.

There is desperate need for a reset of society’s view of what happens in shops. If Parliament is going to give responsibility for upholding the law to individual groups—many of these offences are to do with age-related sales—it should give them protection for upholding the laws that it passes.

Q Paddy Lillis talked about the stand-alone offence in Scotland. You were a prominent campaigner for that. What assessment have you made of that, since its inception?

Paul Gerrard:

I gave evidence to the Scottish equivalent of this, when Daniel Johnson MSP’s Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Good and Services) (Scotland) Bill was passed. Our sense is that it resulted in the police in Scotland taking incidents far more seriously. It is quite hard to come by data, but the data that I see tells me that for attendance at the scene when we report incidents, Police Scotland is one of the five best forces in the country.

Paddy referenced this: when a report is made of violence in stores in Scotland, the individual is arrested 60% of the time. England and Wales are nowhere close to that; here, it is penny numbers. I do not pretend that this is empirical, but our sense as a business is that the protection of workers Act in Scotland increased the importance of this for the police, and the police have responded. If we could get to the position of 60% of reported violent offences resulting in an arrest, my colleagues would be very grateful, as would Paddy’s members, and all the members of the British Retail Consortium.

Q It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I have spoken with those on the witness panel quite a lot recently. For transparency’s sake, Paul and I have probably had five or maybe even 10 meetings in the last six months. Paddy, Helen and I met just yesterday to discuss this topic, together with the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend Kevin Hollinrake.

Helen Dickinson:

It was like a practice for today.

Q Exactly, a dry run. I will just make it clear at the start that we in Government and policing take this recent rise in shoplifting very seriously, as you know. It is my view that we should have a zero-tolerance approach to this offence. It is causing £1 billion of stock a year to be lost, and there are unacceptable levels of assaults against retail workers. I just want to put on record our unequivocal commitment to taking a zero-tolerance approach to this.

You referenced the retail crime action plan. Paul, you just said that you thought that the stand-alone offence in Scotland got increased attention from the police. In law, assaulting a retail worker is illegal, and since the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, if the victim is a public-facing worker, that is statutorily an aggravating factor. You pointed to police attention as a benefit of introducing a separate offence. Just a couple of months ago, we all, except maybe Paddy, sat together at No. 10 Downing Street to launch the retail crime action plan. Do you agree that the commitments made in that plan, if operationalised—my expectation is that it will be, but we have to ensure that police do operationalise it—will deliver what you need, which is the police dealing with this comprehensively?

Paul Gerrard:

We very much welcome that action plan. For a number of months, we have been calling for attendance at incidents involving violent repeat offenders. That is what the police have committed to. As you know, Minister, they are a long way from that; they are not attending 70% of serious incidents at present. I very much welcome the plan, and it is great that the police will turn up. I say that as a former law enforcement officer and Customs and Excise officer. When they do, they need the full tools available.

My strong view is that having a stand-alone offence will give the police, when they do turn up—I am with you; I really hope that they do—all the options they need. It will make it easier and quicker to investigate and prosecute the crime as a summary offence. I would also not underestimate, Minister, the power of Parliament saying that it is a specific offence to attack a shop worker. That will have an impact on three million shop workers, who frankly are not sure at present if Parliament cares what happens to them.

Q On that point, do you think that Parliament sent a signal by making it a statutory aggravating factor if the victim was a public-facing worker? That includes retail workers. Do you feel that was helpful in signalling to retail workers, but also criminals and the wider public, that assault is not acceptable, and we take it very seriously?

Paul Gerrard:

When your predecessor introduced that, we welcomed it, though we said at the time that we would prefer a stand-alone offence. I remember being in a meeting —Paddy was there, as was Helen—with the then Home Secretary, the Attorney General and the Lord Chancellor, and we all welcomed it. The Home Secretary said that if the measure did not work, they would revisit the idea of a stand-alone offence.

Since that aggravated offence has come in, we have seen no discernible difference. I know that the Home Office cannot tell us how often the measure has been used—I am not sure whether it actually has been used—but I do not think that it has made a difference. It cannot be used when the police do not attend in the first place.

Q Yes, okay; I understand your point of view. On your point about the police not attending 80% of cases, I think you said, in which your security staff have detained an offender, that is completely unacceptable. You would presumably welcome the commitment in the retail crime action plan to police always attending if an offender has been detained on the scene, if attendance is necessary to secure evidence, or if a retail worker has been assaulted. Those are important commitments, are they not?

Paul Gerrard:

They are hugely important commitments, and we said at the time—I said clearly on behalf of the Co-op—that we very much welcome the retail crime action plan. My point is that there is still a long way to go before that happens, and I know that you are aware of that. However, when police attend, they need the full toolkit, and one of those tools should be a stand-alone offence, because that makes it quicker and easier to prosecute the individual. It also sends a powerful message to 3 million shop workers in this country.

Q I understand the messaging point, but it would be no quicker to prosecute a stand-alone offence than common assault, actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm. The process would be the same in all cases.

Paddy, perhaps I could turn to you to follow up on that point about tools. We discussed that a little yesterday, in our retail crime steering group meeting. One of the tools that both retailers and the police have at their disposal for identifying, arresting, and prosecuting offenders, and ultimately sending them to prison, is facial recognition. They can use it retrospectively, to catch offenders, and live, to identify prolific offenders who wander into a store. Do you want to share your views on the potential that that technology has to protect retail workers, and retail stores?

Paddy Lillis:

Anything that protects retail workers and the product, and makes society better, I am in favour of. I am in favour of facial recognition, but it needs to be robust, because we already know that in some areas, it is seen as something that could bring racial bias, so we have to ensure that it is tight and robust to deal with that. As for anyone going into a store who is worried about facial recognition, if you go in to shoplift, or to assault a retail worker, then you should be worried about it, but if you are going in to carry out your day-to-day shopping, you should not have a problem with it. I welcome anything that helps the retail workers.

Coming back to what was said about a stand-alone offence, there is no real data tracking. Assaulting a public-facing worker was made an aggravated element that has to be considered by the courts, but it only has to be considered. Having assault of a retail worker as a stand-alone offence means that we can track the data, and track offences going through the court system. That is the benefit of the system in Scotland; more than 6,000 incidents have been investigated by the police, and we can track them through the courts.

This whole thing is about sending out the message to the criminal fraternity that we are all on the side of workers. They should be able to go to work free from fear of being abused, threatened or assaulted at work. This has been going on for too long, and this upsurge in violence and abuse is getting worse. I really urge you to look at this again. This is a win-win for every constituency in the country. You have an opportunity in this Bill to do this.

Q Thank you. On the point about data, we are looking at that separately from legislation. I accept that we need the data, as you say, Paddy.

Helen, we talked about the new commitment in the retail crime action plan on the police to always attend in the circumstances that I mentioned, in order to address the issues that Paul quite rightly pointed to. For the Committee’s benefit, can you talk a bit about the way that we—the Government, policing and the retail community, particularly the British Retail Consortium—can work together to make sure that the commitments in the action plan are delivered in practice?

Helen Dickinson:

There are a couple of things that I would highlight. When we are in conversation with the police, they often talk about whether enough of the right information is being reported to them to enable them to act. One of the workstreams associated with the action plan is about ensuring that people right across retail are aware of what data needs to go into various police systems to enable them to respond as appropriate. There is activity on the retail side, with the support of the police, on that interaction.

The second point you are perhaps alluding to is this data question. Certainly, we have agreed to provide support in the interim period, so that data is collected on response rates. Paul is doing that from a Co-op point of view. The question is whether we can get a wider read. That impacts on this issue. We think a stand-alone offence is required because it really builds on the accountability and visibility that is required from a police resourcing point of view. I think you had various policing people here, talking to the Committee, in previous sittings. If police do not have visibility across forces on what is happening in local communities, they are not allocating resource to the right place and are not necessarily able to respond.

We can certainly help by building the data that will give us a snapshot of whether the commitments made by the police in the action plan are being fulfilled, but that is not a long-term solution that will give us the response rates required from the police to address what is becoming an epidemic across the country, and what we see on the frontline in our communities. When we spoke yesterday, you said you were worried. I think everybody here should be worried. What is happening in certain parts of the US is much worse than the UK, but we are at a real turning point. Will the trajectory be halted? Without police visibility, as well as industry visibility, of the scale of the problem, so that they can put the resource in the right place, we will not make progress on the problem.

You are looking at me, Minister; I have not answered your question. We are really keen to continue the very strong engagement that we have had with you over the past few months. I know that this is a cross-party point, and that everybody takes what is happening very seriously. We are very happy to continue to do that.

Q Thank you, Helen. We will certainly do that. We want a zero-tolerance approach, so that there is not an escalation, as there has been in America, caused or enabled by ultra-liberal policing policies. We want zero tolerance, and we will definitely work with you and the retail sector to ensure that the action plan is delivered, including by ensuring that the police can produce the right data. Thank you for your help in the meantime.

I have just one more question. On the issue of the stand-alone offence, which has come up again and again, we have talked about the data point, and there may be other ways of addressing it. One question that will come up as we debate this issue is that if we create a separate offence for retail workers—we already have a separate offence for assaulting emergency workers, of course—what do we say when the teaching unions say, “Can we have a separate offence of assaulting a teacher?”, the transport unions say, “Can we please have a separate offence of assaulting a bus or tube driver?”, or someone says, “Can we have a separate offence of assaulting someone under the age of 18?” A lot of groups have claims that are just as valid and strong as yours. Will we end up with 50 stand-alone offences—for teachers, bus drivers, train drivers and so on?

Helen Dickinson:

That is a very valid question, but I would turn it around: if any of those other industries was saying, as we are today, “This is an epidemic on a very scary scale, and it is having a huge impact not just on the 3 million people who work in retail, but right across every single community that we live and work in,” and that epidemic was everywhere, that would be valid. However, we are saying that this is a unique situation. It is very specific to what is happening in the retail industry today, and that is why we think that you should focus on retail.

Paddy Lillis:

There are about 1,000 incidents a day, and we think that that is just the tip of the iceberg, because most retail workers are not reporting them. They see them as part of their job. We are trying to get over that. If you are abused in any form at all, it should be reported, so that we get proper data. On a daily basis, there is the cost to industry of sick pay, mental health issues, injury—

Helen Dickinson:

The cost of inflation.

Paddy Lillis:

Absolutely. It really needs to be focused on. These are people performing a duty and serving the public, and if they are abused or assaulted in execution of their duty, they should have the protection of Parliament.

Paul Gerrard:

I have two observations. I said before that I was a customs officer; I have done plenty of night shifts at Dover, and I have done shifts seizing cigarettes. I have never seen, even doing that job, the kind of abuse and violence that shop workers face. It is worth reflecting on just how unpleasant and lawless it is at times. I am not sure that other sectors can say quite the same, but it is for them to make the case.

My second point—I mentioned it before, but I will say it again—is that as legislators, you have asked these people to enforce the law, be it on age-related sales or social guidance during the pandemic. You ask them to enforce the law and put themselves at risk. The work that USDAW does demonstrates that very often violence follows enforcing the law. If you are to ask them to enforce the law, you must give them proper protection. That is the deal that I had always assumed was being made. I will not make a special case for retail workers, but if you are going to make them enforce the law, you should give them proper and special protection in the law for doing so.

Q We have done this already in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. As I said earlier, we have made it a statutory aggravating factor if the victim of an assault is a public-facing worker, and that of course includes retail workers. Do you accept that that is special enhanced protection, because your sentence will be longer if you assault a retail worker?

Paul Gerrard:

There are a couple of things there, Minister. First, I would say yes, although that provision is for all people in public-facing service. The difference here is that if my colleague decides to sell alcohol to someone they should not sell alcohol to, they will face a criminal sanction. This weekend, I was in Manchester, and one of my colleagues refused to sell cigarettes to a minor, who jumped behind the kiosk counter, attacked every single kiosk, and pushed, shoved and threatened staff. If they decided, “Actually, I do not want that to happen; I will just sell them the cigarettes,” they would be breaking the law. That is the difference.

I get the point about public service—as a former public servant, I think that is right—but if you are asking people to enforce the law, you should give them special protection in the law through a stand-alone offence, of the kind that I had when I was a customs officer. It is a stand-alone offence to attack a customs officer, because they are enforcing the law.

I will certainly continue to work with you all, regardless of the details in the Bill, to get the retail crime action plan fully implemented and bring into force a zero-tolerance approach. I think we all agree that that is necessary, and I will do everything possible to ensure that the police deliver that operationally. Thank you for your work in this area, and I look forward to keeping on working with you.

Q One of our witnesses on Tuesday—it has completely escaped my mind which one—said it was very important that retailers did their part of the job too in ensuring that shops were safe environments to work in and not easy to steal from. I want to give Helen and Paul in particular the right to reply on that, because I thought you might want to.

Helen Dickinson:

I agree completely with that comment. The reason why over 90 chief executives signed the letter to the Home Secretary from right across different parts of retail was that they are concerned about the fact that they are doing all they can, but feel that there is nothing more they can do. Paddy mentioned some statistics.

How do I describe it? It has two big impacts: one is financial, on the bottom line, how the profit of companies will be impacted unless they do everything that they can to address what could impact their business; and the second impact is on their biggest asset, which is their people, whether that is in absenteeism, morale or motivation to do their job well. Those two motivating factors, from a business leader point of view, mean something to every single business leader that I talk to. Literally, that is probably the thing that comes up most in the chief executive conversations that I have, because they feel that they have done everything that they can and that they are running out of road in terms of things that they could do.

The Minister asked about facial recognition, and I know that that is being explored by a lot of people. There have been various announcements about body cameras. People pay money into business improvement districts and regional partnerships. We have the Pegasus Project, which is trying to get better co-ordination across different parts of the police, specifically focused on organised gangs. That is being funded by retail businesses. They are not handing it all back and going, “It’s someone else’s problem.”

That is my answer to whoever it was. I am very happy to put them in front of any retail business, and I am sure they will be given lot of reasons. Paul, I do not know if there is anything you want to add.

Paul Gerrard:

The Co-op is one of the businesses that is funding Operation Pegasus. Over the past four or five years, we have spent £200 million on security measures in our stores. That is four times the sector average. If you go into some of our stores, you will see state-of-the-art CCTV, body-worn cameras and headsets. We have increased our guarding budget by almost 60% from pre-covid days. We are constantly investing. We have had a problem with kiosks, where people jump behind the kiosk counter, often armed, terrifying colleagues who are still in the kiosk. We have just invested heavily in new kiosks to stop people from doing that.

Helen is absolutely right: the retail sector takes this really seriously. We consider the first responsibility to be ours, which is why we invest as much as we do to keep colleagues and shops safe, but we are getting to the point with some stores in the Co-op estate and across retail where it is increasingly hard to work out how to run a store that keeps colleagues safe and can make a commercial return. That will mean that shops will close, and we all see what happens when shops close: communities face tough times.

I have heard the police express that idea that we are not doing anything. They have had a similar, less-than-polite response from me when they have said it, because it is patently untrue.

Paddy Lillis:

It is 21st-century Britain, and we have retail workers with body cams on—it sounds like a war zone. At the time, we are trying to get things right and get people back into the towns and city centres, but we are helpless. It is a societal problem, something we all need to work towards addressing. We must put the support we need behind retail staff and businesses. I have worked with them. Security measures just last year cost £1 billion, with more and more going in, but somewhere along the line we all pay for that. It is a massive problem that has to be addressed.

I am interested in the answer that Helen gave to the Minister about why retail workers should be a special case. I wonder if you would speak a little more about that. My understanding is that attacks on teachers, doctors, leisure staff, pub staff or whatever have not increased in particular in recent times, whereas we have seen this tremendous surge not only in organised crime in shops, but in assaults on retail workers.Q

The reason why the Government—rightly—responded to proposed changes for emergency workers was that we had seen a huge increase in activity: attacks on vehicles, on people, and everything else associated with that. Helen, would you like to talk a little bit more about that, and just clarify that it is also your understanding that it has soared in the retail sector, whereas some of the other categories that the Minister referred to have, in fact, remained relatively static?

Helen Dickinson:

I think Paul summed it up. I cannot comment on behalf of other industries, because I am not close to what might be happening. I engage a lot with my peer group across different sectors, and it does not come up in the same way as it does when engaging with my members.

Paddy Lillis:

Retail is an easy target for people. It is an easy way to make money, as Paul outlined earlier. In today’s climate, as I said, there are three areas: the cost of living, addiction to alcohol and drugs, and now the criminal gang element. The retailers rightly told me that this is a golden quarter. It is a golden quarter as well for the criminal gangs, because they are in there robbing the shops under the cover of thousands of people shopping every day.

Paul Gerrard:

If you were to ask people who have been in retail for decades, nobody would say they have seen anything like this, even during covid. No one has seen this scale of crime and the—often weaponised —violence and abuse that goes with that. It is out of control. We released CCTV footage earlier this summer, and it is like a riot trying to get into some of our stores, because people are intent on stealing and causing violence and abuse. I do not think anyone in retail—Paddy has been in and around retail for much longer than me—has seen it like this before.

Helen Dickinson:

Businesses such as the Co-op—in convenience— have often been at the frontline, because there is that proof of age required when somebody is buying alcohol or cigarettes or whatever else it might be. He is seeing that escalation, but there are other sectors that would never have raised this as an issue now bringing it up as the most significant thing impacting their business. One of my members is a beauty business with only one or two staff members in its stores. It has the same organised gang turning up, week in week out, using abuse and violence to basically get the staff to step back so that they can literally just sweep the whole stock. A business like that is potentially going to shut up shop, because it is not worth it in terms of loss. I do not know if we have quite answered your question.

Q I think you have—I am quite content with that.

Paul, in your earlier evidence, you talked about the difference that you believe the change has made in Scotland. I think you said that there was a 60% arrest rate. I think it is probably in single figures south of the border. How much of that do you think is due to the law change, and how much is maybe a change in police policy, or the fact that police numbers have increased a little in Scotland?

Paul Gerrard:

I am not sure I can talk to the latter point. I would say that in Scotland we see a police force that is taking it more seriously. Maybe they have more officers; I do not know. They take it more seriously. I think Daniel Johnson MSP’s Protection of Workers Act has sharpened minds and given a really strong message that the Scottish Parliament considers an attack against a shopworker to be a particular kind of crime. I said that there is a 60% arrest rate on reported violent incidents. We are absolutely nowhere near that in England, because they are not turning up enough to do that.

Helen Dickinson:

The visibility of the tracking means that it prioritises the resource. That then increases the response rate, and it becomes self-fulfilling.

Q Even in England, we saw a huge cut in the number of police officers across the country since 2010. At least we are getting back to a point now where we actually have more police officers again. Do you think that is actually going to make a difference, and might it lead to more activity in shops—the retail world—than it might have done otherwise?

Helen Dickinson:

Not without the measurement to be able to prioritise it.

That is helpful, thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Only to put on record that we actually have record police numbers now. It is not getting back towards the peak; the peak has been exceeded by about 3,500—

You do not have to give evidence!

That is on the record. In that case, I thank the witnesses for their time and for their very open and full answers.