Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I very much welcome this debate and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, whom I regard as a noble friend—not in the sense used in our House but in the sense used outside it. We worked together at Tesco for many years. In that time, Tesco grew rapidly. That helped me as an executive, but it also helped the noble Lord, who often topped the table in new trade union membership as a result. He and Sir Terry Leahy had a shared love of Everton’s premier football team. Few people know that the packaging for Tesco value lines were blue and white because of that love.
I will talk about two things this afternoon: first, and very positively, the need to deal much better with retail crime and my support for that; and secondly, but only briefly as it is a wider issue, my concern about the negative impact of the Budget on retail.
Retail crime was a major concern when I worked in the retail sector—now 10 years ago—and the work we did together in the British Retail Consortium and with the police made a huge social contribution. We invested a lot in security measures and our security suppliers built up export-earning businesses overseas. At that time a lot of the theft was by individuals stealing to feed their drug habit. I remember the sadness of arresting such people when I started my Tesco life in a store in Brixton, which was cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika. Then, it was bottles of Nescafé down women’s trousers and cuts of meat smuggled out with the help of a blind eye at the check-out, but now the position is much worse. Organised crime groups are increasingly involved in systemic, large-scale retail theft, amply justifying a major initiative to tackle this.
I welcome the £7 million in the Budget for funding both the national policing intelligence unit, Opal, to combat organised gangs that target retail, and the National Business Crime Centre on prevention and the tackling of crime. However, this is funding over three years. It does not feel enough, given not only the ever-growing risk and the way gangs in one area use the proceeds of crime to expand into other areas but their growing use of knives and violence. My noble friend Lord Kirkham described this extremely graphically.
The truth is that retail crime in the UK has risen sharply, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, explained. The graph in the excellent Library note shows how seriously the number of offences has increased, and we know that even that is an underestimate. According to the BRC, retail crime cost businesses £1.8 billion in 2023, which was double the previous year’s figure. Thefts rose to 16.7 million, up from 8 million. That is 45,000 theft incidents every day. Equally concerning is the incidence of violence against retail workers. It has skyrocketed, rising by 50% to 1,300 incidents a day. The noble Lord, Lord Hannett, explained the compelling numbers in this area.
I could see this coming during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in 2021 and although I worked well from the Back Benches with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and secured some changes to sentencing guidelines, I would have liked Labour support for an actual offence of the kind that we introduced at that time for health workers. It was a missed opportunity, so I am delighted by the Government’s promise to create a new offence for assaulting retail workers. Please can they advance this quickly and introduce the necessary Bill? I believe that they will also expand electronic tagging and the use of facial technology.
The House of Commons is crying out for meaty Bills that contribute to growth rather than devoting so much time to debates, so I look forward to hearing the Minister’s plans for legislation and enforcement, and the £200 threshold. Will he agree to look at deterrent tariffs for this new assault offence and for retail crime more generally? These need to be tough enough to attract police time and police priority. One of my sons works for the Met, although not in retail, so I know how these things work. Moreover, we need dedicated resources for the police to address retail crime and capture the gangs. We are crying out for much-improved police response times to show that the damaging criminal behaviour seen in retail is taken seriously. I will strongly support tough measures.
This brings me on to the negative. Noble Lords will know that retail is vital to the UK economy and our high streets. It employs 3 million hard-working people and 2.7 million in the supply chain, contributing over £100 billion annually to GDP. What is so disappointing is that the Budget has created unmanageable costs for a sector which employs millions of people and yet runs on very low margins. The new policies are estimated by the BRC to add costs of £7 billion a year by 2025, threatening jobs, insolvencies and more inflation. That is £2.2 million on national insurance, £2.7 million on the national living wage increase and—another slap in the face—a packaging levy of £2 billion. Of course, retailers’ rates bills are also expected to increase in April. This does not leave much for the security measures that the industry needs to tackle crime, which cost it £1.2 billion in 2023—up from £720 million the previous year.
This is a very important and timely debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, for his eloquence, his passion and his work on “freedom from fear” and for bringing us all together today. I trust that it will lead to early action.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, said, there is unanimity on the approach to the issue of shop theft, as has been eloquently outlined by my noble friend Lord Hannett. I thank him for securing this timely debate, and all who have spoken in it. My noble friend brings to his role in your Lordships’ House a wealth of experience in standing up for shop workers in his work for USDAW. He is continuing that work in conjunction with his colleague Paddy Lillis, who is the general secretary of USDAW. Most importantly, my noble friend brings the life experience of thousands of members in shops and stores across the United Kingdom, who have contributed to developing USDAW’s policy and, in doing so, the policy of the Labour Party and this Labour Government. They contributed too to the pressure that was put on the previous Conservative Government to take action.
I declare an interest: I have been a member of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for 44 years. I have stacked shelves, worked the tills and delivered to people’s doors, so I know the pressures in retail. The noble Baroness may be interested to know that I did this for Tesco, and later the Co-op.
The important thing is that there is unanimity here today. We need to change the tenor of the debate on shop theft and the protection of shop workers. We have seen today that there is unanimity in this debate: it is not acceptable in our society to steal from shops; it is not acceptable to attack shop workers in the course of their duty; and it is not acceptable to undertake ram raids or organise crime raids on shops and outlets. This is not a victimless crime; it adds money to everybody’s bills and to the cost of strengthening security for staff, and this Government are committed to taking action on it.
We do so for the reasons that have been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, in a very powerful speech, and my noble friends Lord Monks and Lady Crawley and many others, who indicated that there is an unacceptable rise in the level of shop theft.
I particularly welcome the committee report that was produced. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, was a key member of the committee, along with my noble friend Lord Dubs—who, I must say, on his 92nd birthday is arguing in this Chamber for protection for shop staff and against shop theft. That shows the commitment that he has to his party and his cause but also to the good of the country at large. I wish him a very happy birthday.
Shop theft is up 29% in the year to June 2024 compared with the previous year. The British Retail Consortium crime survey has shown that around 475,000 incidents of violence occur each year. My noble friends Lord Monks, Lady Crawley and Lady Hazarika all mentioned the importance of tackling that crime. Whether it is on Lambeth High Street, in Brixton or in north Wales, where I am heading back this evening, there will be a concerted effort to ensure that we reduce the number of crimes that occur in shops. However, it is not just about the shoplifting; it is unacceptable to have 1,300 incidents of violence against staff in our communities at large.
It is not easy for this Government, and it will never be easy. But the points that the noble Lord, Lord Godson, and other Members of this House made today are extremely important. That is why the Government have a plan for action to both mirror some of the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Committee and Justice Committee of this House, and to commit to a range of things.
On a personal basis, having campaigned for some of these things for the best part of 20 years, I am absolutely delighted to stand at this Dispatch Box and to be able to put action in place, because we have a Government who have committed to do that. Among the actions that we will bring forward and put in place is a specific offence of attacking shop workers, which USDAW—which I am a proud member of—has campaigned for since 2003. Freedom from fear is an absolutely important issue. Shop staff are not just serving us but are upholding the law on alcohol, knife, solvent and tobacco sales. When they find themselves facing threats because of that, they deserve our support and our encouragement. That is why the Government will in due course, as a manifesto commitment, bring forward a specific offence of assaulting shop workers.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that the £200 threshold did not change the law but it sent a signal to the police that shoplifting under £200 was not an important issue. I recognised that in 2014 and I led the opposition to that. We forced a vote on that clause then because we thought it would downgrade the importance of shop theft, which, as a whole, it did. We will repeal that in due course and will make sure that the police have proper guidance on those issues.
We will, as a number of my noble friends mentioned, increase the number of neighbourhood police and PCSOs to 13,000, to have a named officer in each community who will work with the local community and look at the very issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned as well—community intelligence-gathering and community support. Through work we are doing now, which is a continuation of the previous Government’s work, we will look at Opal and Project Pegasus to co-ordinate action on gangs, tackling crime across borders and across police authorities.
There were points made in the debate which I will certainly reflect on, as well as the issue of drug and alcohol treatment orders and on technology, ensuring that we look at facial technology issues as a whole. We will reflect on those issues in due course, and when legislation on these issues comes before this House, which it will in relatively short order, we will be able to deal with those issues as a whole. We keep new technologies under review, and we will keep those technologies under review in the future.
I noticed a small frisson of concern from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the Labour Government’s Budget, which I will return to briefly in a moment. As my noble friend Lord Hannett said, it provided £100,000 for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, £5 million over the next three years to develop Operation Opal and £2 million over the next three years to build the National Business Crime Centre. If the noble Baroness looks at the detail in the Budget, she will see that there are proposals on business rates and on strengthening and revitalising the high street. I have campaigned for these issues over the last 10 to 20 years and I am more than proud to stand here today and say that this Government will take action on shop theft and assaults on retail workers in due course.
The facial recognition technology mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Kirkham and Lord Davies, is a very powerful tool and has huge potential to keep our streets safe. This gives us an opportunity to look at how we operate it. We particularly want to look at how we can put that on a firm footing to make our streets safe. In answer to their specific point, we want to ensure that we look at the legal framework and discuss that issue with the public over the coming months.
I am acutely aware that this House has been united today. There are no political differences. There may be differences over pressure, time and the things we have done, but there is unanimity that Parliament and Government should take action on these issues. A number of detailed issues were mentioned. I could go through them, but that would take time. I hope that the emphasis I have put on the measures the Government intend to bring forward give reassurance to all Members of this House that this Government are committed to the issue of shop theft.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, summed up the importance of this issue and how we need to focus on the staff. Shop workers will be on the train with me tonight. They will be on the bus going home. They will be walking the streets around you. They are the people who serve you and they deserve our support. The customers are there to support the staff and we need to make a stand to say that, although we will never eradicate shop theft or violence, it is a priority for the Government, the police and Parliament that, between us, we will help reduce crime, shoplifting and violence over the course of this Parliament.
I commend the measures that my noble friend Lord Hannett has proposed. We will hopefully find widespread support in due course for the measures that this Parliament will face when the Government bring them forward.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
Does my noble friend agree that the most shocking account in this debate was given by our noble friend Lady Hazarika who was in a shop when a rogue came in and stole two bottles of alcohol? He was known as a repeat offender and his identity was known. Would my noble friend agree that that is a most shocking account for this framework to improve the law?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his intervention after I thought I had finished. Repeat offenders are part of a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. Part of that is due to alcohol or drug dependence and part of it is due to interventions in alcohol and drug dependence. That is part of the focus of the Ministry of Justice. The MoJ will look at many measures in relation to how we better tag, control and monitor offenders and what interventions we make to reduce their dependence on alcohol and drugs.
It is important that the revolving door of prison sentences—the cycle of people going into prison for six months, coming out, committing the offences that my noble friend Lady Hazarika mentioned, going back to prison, coming out again and then finding themselves homeless—needs to be broken. I know that my noble friend Lord Timpson, who is accountable to this House, is very exercised by those issues and will bring forward a number of measures to try to improve how we deal with offenders who have a persistent offending behaviour. Overall, the issues of tolerance are still there. We should not tolerate shoplifting, attacks on shop staff or organised crime gangs, and we should look collectively at what measures we can bring. I hope that I have given some indication to the House of how we can do that.