The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I am, as always, grateful to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing this important debate. It is of course relevant to my ministerial responsibilities, but I should add that my first formal paid employment at the age of about 16 was in a supermarket in south London, close to my constituency, so I greatly sympathise with the issues raised. Years later, I ran a business that supplied convenience stores up and down the country, so it is a topic close to my heart.
I would like to start by saying clearly that any form of retail crime is completely unacceptable. I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of emphasising that this is a serious form of crime and that it should not, at any point, be dismissed or treated by the police or anyone else as somehow minor or to be disregarded. That is important because shop workers often get assaulted, which is serious for them. The hon. Member pointed out the enormous financial losses that result from widespread shoplifting and, if it is left unchecked, it simply escalates. What might start off as pilfering or what some would wrongly describe as low-level theft can escalate into something much more serious and widespread.
We have seen that elsewhere in the world—I think in particular about San Francisco, as well as other American cities—where both the police and store security guards appear not to intervene and, as a consequence, stores are raided and stolen from on a large scale multiple times a day. In San Francisco, a number of shops have had to close down completely because shoplifting has become so rampant and out of control. For all those reasons, it needs to be taken extremely seriously. There is a very compelling case for doing that.
The Government do take it seriously—I certainly do, as does the Home Secretary. In fact, just a couple of days ago—I think it was on Monday—I chaired a meeting of the national retail crime steering group, bringing together the retail industry and law enforcement to sharpen our response to retail crime. It was attended by, among others, the British Retail Consortium, the Association of Convenience Stores and representatives of all kinds of retailers, as well as police and crime commissioners and various people from the policing family. We discussed a number of things, one of which was the impact of section 156 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which made assaulting a public-facing worker—particularly retail workers, but also others, such as bus drivers—a statutory aggravating factor. That, again, is designed to send a signal to the public as well as to the police and the judiciary that such crimes are taken seriously. During that meeting, we considered an article that appeared over the weekend in The Times by Dame Sharon White, the chair of John Lewis, raising concerns about this matter. We talked about the need for a proper police response at all times when shoplifting occurs.
The hon. Member mentioned resources. Of course, we now have more police officers across England and Wales than at any point in history—149,572 police officers, which is about 3,500 more than the previous peak in 2010—so there are extra resources, certainly in England and Wales. I take his point about Northern Ireland being a bit different. With all those officers in place, I do expect, as Policing Minister, an appropriate response, by which I mean that proper investigations should occur, as do the public and Members of this House.
There is often CCTV footage of somebody shoplifting. We now have extremely advanced and capable means of matching images taken on CCTV cameras against the records held on the police national database, and there is often a match. That is what I would expect to happen in every case. Where there is a lead, I would expect it to be followed up.
Similarly, I would expect an appropriate police response where an incident is unfolding of the kind that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned. I would expect the police to attend. From what I have seen in the video he refers to, it was not handled appropriately. Where an incident is unfolding, the police should respond. If the police need to attend to gather evidence that requires their physical attendance, they should do that.
Obviously, the police are operationally independent and I do not have the power to direct them, nor should I. However, I will convene a further meeting with the National Police Chiefs’ Council leads in this area, together with the British Retail Consortium, the Association of Convenience Stores and others, to make sure that there is an appropriate response at all times, that those crimes are investigated and prevented, and that there is appropriate prosecutorial follow-up.
Under section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, where the shoplifting relates to goods under £200 in value and the defendant pleads guilty and does not want the case heard in a Crown court, it is treated as summary only. In fact, the police can charge it. That change was made, but there was categorically no requirement set out in legislation or guidance that offences where the amount of goods stolen is under £200 should in any way be ignored. They should certainly not be ignored.
Ian Paisley
I welcome the Minister’s point, which needs to be driven home to local police services and, importantly, to shop owners. On the group that he set up and is taking advice from, it is brilliant that progress will be made, but I encourage him to invite the British Independent Retailers Association and the Association of Convenience Stores to that group, so that smaller businesses can have their voice heard.
Chris Philp
The Association of Convenience Stores was at the meeting on Monday and will come to the subsequent meeting that I referred to. I will be happy to invite the other group that the hon. Gentleman referred to. Officials are listening and will make sure that the invitation is extended.
To repeat the point on goods that are stolen with a value under £200, the previous Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), wrote to all chief constables and police and crime commissioners to make it clear that section 176 does not restrain the police’s ability to arrest and prosecute. Further to that, in 2020 the National Business Crime Centre surveyed police forces in England and Wales, asking if they had a policy of not responding to shoplifting where goods are worth less than £200. No police force said that it had any such policy, which is reassuring. However, I want to make sure that the practice on the ground is appropriate. I was concerned by the points raised by Dame Sharon White, the chair of John Lewis, in her article in The Times over the weekend, saying that she felt the police response was not adequate. That is why I will have further discussions with the relevant NPCC leads and others in the near future.
I would like to address the short but excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. I have touched on the incident he mentioned, but he also made a point about security guards, and he is right to say that even though they are not warranted police officers, security guards have the right, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, to physically intervene when there is no police constable on the scene and a crime is being committed. They can make a citizen’s arrest, as any member of the public can.
Interestingly, I was refreshing my memory about section 176 of the 2014 Act, which I mentioned. When the crime of stealing goods worth less than £200 was made summary-only, it would have fallen outside the scope of offences where a member of the public, including a security guard, can make a citizen’s arrest, were it not for an express provision in section 176 that makes it clear that shoplifting goods under the value of £200 does still trigger the right to make a citizen’s arrest under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Back in 2014—I was not a Member of Parliament then, but my hon. Friend was—Parliament legislated expressly to allow that power of citizen’s arrest to apply specifically to shoplifting when the goods are worth less than £200.
Of course we need to be conscious of the safety of security guards, but I would urge them to intervene when they see someone shoplifting. If they do not, that simply allows shoplifting to go unchecked, and people will be almost encouraged to shoplift if they think it will go unpunished. I have seen plenty of video footage from the United States in which store security guards do not intervene—perhaps because people in the United States often have guns, which, thankfully, is not normally the case here—and the problem escalates out of control. I agree with my hon. Friend that security guards should intervene appropriately, unless they really believe that their safety will be at risk, because that acts as a deterrent. As I have said, they have the legal powers to do so.
There are also some very good technical solutions that retailers can adopt to be proactive. One company that works in a number of retail stores, including the Co-op in parts of the south of England—it is a private sector company, so I will not name it—uses a live facial recognition system that hooks into the CCTV cameras. It is connected to a database containing images of known prolific shoplifters. When one of them walks into the store, an alert is triggered so the staff know that a prolific shoplifter has just walked in. The company recommends that a staff member should approach the shoplifter and do nothing more than say, politely, “Excuse me, sir, can I help?” The mere act of doing that often acts as a deterrent, and the shoplifter simply leaves, knowing that he or she is being observed.
The company has shown me data revealing that the number of assaults against retail stores deploying the system has dropped by about 20%, while in the stores that have not deployed it the number rose. In the stores where it has not been deployed, there has been a significant rise in the incidence of theft—part of the wider increase that we have discussed—whereas in those that have deployed it, there has been a very slight decline. The system was recently scrutinised by the Information Commissioner’s Office for the usual data protection and privacy reasons, and, following lengthy consideration, the company is being allowed to proceed. I think that systems of that kind can be extremely helpful.
I do not want to try the House’s patience by going on for too much longer. Let me conclude by reiterating my agreement with the view of the hon. Member for North Antrim that this is a serious form of crime that causes enormous financial loss, leads to many assaults on hard-working staff members and, if it goes unchecked, escalates to a point at which widespread disorder permeates society. For all those reasons, I think that we need to do more, and I commit myself to doing that through the meetings to which I have referred. I thank the hon. Member again for drawing the matter to the House’s attention.
Ian Paisley
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think a point of order is the only way in which I can say this. I want to thank the Minister, because his was one of the most helpful responses I have ever received during an Adjournment debate. I just wanted to put that on the record.