Retail Crime: Effects

Baroness Hazarika Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hazarika (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, for organising this important debate. He brings great wisdom and experience, having represented shop workers over many decades, and is one of our most respected trade union leaders at USDAW. I also look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Monks.

The timing of this debate is highly apt and very personal to me because, on Monday evening, I popped into my local shop in Lambeth, south London, to pick up some groceries. A very aggressive man barged in, pushed past a queue of customers, marched up to the alcohol aisle by the till and grabbed two bottles of spirits. The poor security guard tried to stop him. The shoplifter then turned very aggressive and threatened not only the member of staff but everyone around him. The whole shop froze with fear and the guy simply walked out. It was genuinely incredible to witness. Everyone in the shop was very shaken up by this, and I spoke to the security guard and asked if he was okay. He told me that this happens all the time. He fears for his safety and that of the customers, especially when there are mums with young kids in doing their shopping. He also told me that this guy was a serial offender; he comes in a couple of times a week, sometimes even a couple of times a day. He is a violent menace, and yet nobody does anything.

The shocking thing is that everybody knows who this person is. The evidence is there, and yet nothing happens. The police do not take it seriously and employers do not know what to do. The security guard cares deeply, but he does not want to risk life and limb. The worst thing is that this is the new normal. Let that sink in: we now live in a society where we teach our children about rules and laws, yet they see people saunter into a shop, fill their boots, threaten violence and walk out scot free. In what world is that okay?

There will be some who argue that this kind of crime is just low level. I could not disagree more. Shoplifting is not trivial in any way; it is theft. It is often the canary down the coal mine, which tells us an interesting story about where society is. We all know that sky-high shoplifting goes hand in hand with anti-social behaviour—litter, street harassment, aggressive begging, mugging, phone theft, drug dealing, violence, particularly against women and girls on the street, and the rest. Anti-social behaviour is blighting so many of our communities and causing so much misery.

I am part of a local community group in the Brixton area where I live called Action on ASB!, and I can tell you that local residents are distressed and fed up with it. Not only is it horrible to live in an area where you and your kids feel frightened; it causes huge damage to the local economy. I will quote the Brixton business improvement district, known as BID, which represents more than 500 local members. It says that the Brixton economy is worth £2 billion annually, which is a third of the whole Lambeth economy, so it is important. Movement data shows a considerable fall in footfall—in some cases as much as 25% compared to the previous year. The BID argues that personal safety, crime and anti-social behaviour is a key reason why people are staying away from the local area, and cites shoplifting and verbal and physical abuse against workers as a major problem.

Retail crime, along with anti-social behaviour, has reached an unsustainable level in Brixton and it is affecting people’s quality of life. But this is not just in Brixton and Lambeth; it is happening all over the country, and it can have devastating consequences.

A much-loved local business owner and good friend of mine, who owns a second-hand shop, had a terrible experience recently. As he was closing up one night, he was attacked and beaten so badly that he has now lost his sight in one eye. His life was saved only by a passer-by who made an intervention. So I say again to anyone who challenges me: retail crime is not low-level crime. It is intrinsically connected to more serious crime, and it is time we took it seriously.

We need more police, and I strongly welcome the announcement today of 13,000 more officers, but we need those police to take this more seriously and actually turn up. We also need to prosecute and punish this crime. There are often a small number of hardened criminals who are responsible for terrorising local shops and are known in the area. As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, argued, let us target them using technology such as facial recognition.

We also need to acknowledge that alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness, prostitution and mental health issues contribute to this kind of behaviour, so we need a joined-up approach that brings together local authorities and police, along with other key agencies from public health and housing.

Above all, we need real leadership on this from our politicians, national and local, and from our police. We should not just surrender our local high streets to a Wild West where shop workers, residents and customers are subjected to theft, intimidation and violence on a daily, sometimes even an hourly, basis. The toll on them is not just physically but psychologically immense, and it is harming the wider economy.

There is also a moral question here: what kind of society do we want to live in? We once prided ourselves as a nation of shopkeepers. The local shop and convenience store make up the fabric of our communities —it is where we see our friends and our neighbours—but their owners and workers should not feel like they are living in a war zone, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, so eloquently describes. It is time to get tough on retail crime and make our shops and streets safer for everyone.