30,000 incidents of violence and abuse were recorded against workers who provided a direct service to the Scottish public last year. The Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland report that one fifth of their members are assaulted or harassed from the public each year. The level of abuse meted out to Scottish workers serving the pubic is shameful and needs to be tackled.

In 2004, our Parliament acted decisively by passing the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, which makes provision for specific statutory offences where a person assaults, obstructs or hinders someone providing certain ‘emergency services’ such as doctors, nurses, police officers, and fire officers. There were 301 prosecutions under the 2005 Act in 2008/09.

Generally speaking, Scots lawyers don’t like specific statutory offences overlapping common law offences; they are seen as unnecessary given the flexibility of common law offences such as assault or breach of the peace. In a perfect world that might be right, but the realpolitik requires statutory offences for social policy purposes.

For example in 1995, section 50A of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 introduced the offence of racially aggravated harassment where the alleged conduct was aggravated by racial malice and ill-will. Since then, the Offences (Aggravation By Prejudice) (Scotland) Act 2009 has introduced aggravated offences where there has been an offence committed due to prejudice based on disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

The Crown Office explain why we sometimes need to highlight certain offences against particular groups within our society:
"there is a need to increase trust in the criminal justice system and in the prosecution service. Our prosecution policy on racially aggravated crime is robust to ensure a consistent approach and to reassure victims of racist crime that their complaints will be taken seriously. In many ways this is the most robust of all our prosecution policies but there are good reasons for this, the most important being the need to send a message to Scottish society that racism will not be tolerated whenever it occurs as a crime".

Highlighting particular crimes has a deterrent effect, and sends out a strong social message that such behaviour won't be tolerated. Should public serving workers who are often in harms way - whether in the private, public or voluntary sectors - be given a more robust and consistent assurance that their complaints will be taken seriously? Is it important to send a message to Scottish society that assaulting public serving workers will not be tolerated whenever it occurs?

The Cabinet Secretary for Justice doesn't think so. While he supports the Emergency Workers Act, he thinks there is no need to protect other Scottish workers. To do so would dilute its effectiveness, according to Mr MacAskill. All of which is odd when you consider that in 2008 the Scottish Government extended the Emergency Workers Act to include GPs, nurses and midwifes in non-emergency circumstances. So a medical professional dealing with the public as part of their daily rountine in the comfort of their office has special recognition but a conductor on a packed train late at night, or a young woman in a late night service station doesn't?

Hugh Henry MSP's proposed Protection of Workers (Scotland) Bill does not seek to extend the Emergency Workers Act. Instead, it simply creates a separate new category of statutory offence where a public-facing worker is assaulted. Its purpose is wholly consistent with equivalent legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament over the last decade for other groups: to reassure a particular section of our society that the abuse meted out at them will not be tolerated any longer; that something will be done. Scotland's public serving workers need their elected representatives to stand up for them.

Mike