Shop workers must not have to put up with abuse and crime - Sir Keir Starmer

And it’s not just who we are for – it’s what we are for. That we serve working people as they drive our country forward. A purpose that is now written through our plans for this country,

A plan that can get Britain’s future back. Drag politics in this country back to service. So together - we tilt Britain back towards your interests.

A Britain where new homes, new infrastructure, new investment gets our economy growing again. Where a publicly-owned energy company harnesses clean British power, not foreign oil and gas. Where every primary school runs a free breakfast club, and our children get mental health support when they need it.

Where we rescue our NHS by cutting the waiting lists and ending the 8am scramble at your GP surgery. And where we rebuild the fabric of our society from the ground up.

Back the pride and potential in every community. With vibrant high streets, better access to face-to-face banking and a total crackdown on the anti-social behaviour that blights our towns.

I worked in criminal justice for a good portion of my life, so I choose my words carefully. But nobody in Britain should be in any doubt about the scale of the crime wave on our high streets at the moment. The epidemic levels of shoplifting and the persistent plague of antisocial behaviour.

You know, some people say to me this is petty. ‘Petty crime’ they say, ‘low-level’ crime and perhaps for them it is. But they don’t see the damage this does to your community.

Nobody should have to put up with it. You should not have to put up with it.

So today I am putting shoplifters on notice. You might get away with this under this weak Tory government but if Labour takes power, we won’t stand-by while crime takes over our streets.

We’ll put 13,000 extra neighbourhood police on the beat. We’ll scrap the Shoplifter’s Charter - the £200 rule that stops the police investigating theft in your workplace. And we will legislate to make sure assaulting and abusing shopworkers is a standalone criminal offence.

We will embark on the biggest levelling-up of worker rights this country has seen for a generation.

My dad was a toolmaker, he worked in a factory. And he always thought, back in the 80s, that some people in society looked down on him for it. Disrespected him. Didn’t value his work, his contribution.

To be honest, it weighed him down. I saw how it chipped away at his self-esteem. And I know some people still feel like that now. Many of them - the same people we were clapping and thanking in the pandemic.

Working people who, not only wonder whether this is a country that respects and values their work, but that now in this cost-of-living crisis, also find themselves working harder and harder just to stand still.

In a country like ours, it should be a given that hard work is fairly rewarded.

Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, was speaking to the USDAW National Conference.