Retail Crime Prevention

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) on outlining the major points.

I want to say one thing to the Minister: the £200 de minimis level is now so counterproductive that it is causing as many problems as it solves. I accept that it is not easy to get a prosecution. It has to go through the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, but the problem now, as was said earlier—and I have talked to numerous people—is that I face losing shops. Perhaps £200 does not sound much, but a succession of £200 losses causes difficulties because the same businesses get hit time after time. I have had instances where people who take whatever they take wave at the CCTV camera on the way out, and a member of the shop’s staff has to decide whether to intervene, with the possibility of violence against them, or allow the perpetrator to leave. That is why the £200 de minimis level is wrong. If someone steals, they should face the possibility of prosecution, no matter what the shop’s circumstances are. It is particularly problematic for smaller shops, because they are hit much more regularly. The bigger shops have the means to bear down and prosecute in their own right if the police choose not to prosecute.

I want to commend two organisations. The all-party parliamentary group on retail crime has been very valuable. There are many all-party groups. They spread themselves around and dilute our ability to do things, but the APPG on retail crime has been valuable. I am close to the Association of Convenience Stores. I have met representatives on many occasions, and I am told that shops in Stroud have lost an estimated £184,816 because of retail crime. The appeal has to be made to police and crime commissioners, although they cannot deal with the operational stuff. We have a very good police and crime commissioner in Gloucestershire. Martin Surl has taken up this issue and made it clear that he will be supportive, but we lack police numbers. Far too often the police either do not turn up at all or they turn up very late. They are incredibly sympathetic because they know what has happened and they know about the impact on the owners and staff, but they say it is impossible to do much about it.

We need to get rid of the de minimis level. We have to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, as was said some years ago. All the issues to do with mental health and drug and alcohol abuse are integrated into the whole problem, but we cannot allow the crimes to carry on, or most of our convenience stores will disappear. That would be tragic in a rural area, because that store is often the last shop in the village, and such stores serve a community purpose. Can we therefore get rid of the £200 de minimis level? If the Minister agrees, I will be happy as I go through the election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

That is exactly right. If a chief constable decrees that it is a problem in their area, it is perfectly possible for them to have a policy of prosecuting thefts of a value under £200. I am certainly willing to make sure that chiefs across the country are aware of that.

Given the depth of concern expressed this morning, if I am returned to this job after the election, I am happy to look at the data and see what it tells us about the operation of that policy, now that we are four or five years in. I do not think there is any problem with us reviewing that data internally and deciding whether the policy is working, and then promulgating some kind of best practice.

A number of challenges were made on the recruitment of 20,000 police officers. The right hon. Member for Delyn asked me when they would be recruited—recruitment has already started. A number of police forces are recruiting, not least because we have 3,000 police officers to recruit from last year’s budget settlement. With the allocations to all forces, we have already signalled what the recruitment targets should be over the next 15 months or so.

We expect the first 6,000 of the 20,000 to be recruited by the end of the financial year next year, 8,000 in the year after and the final 6,000 in the year after that. It will not be a straight progression, not least because police officers tend to retire at unpredictable times. When we add in retirees, we have to recruit somewhere between 45,000 and 50,000 police officers over the next three years, which will be a huge job. Nevertheless, we have been given £45 million in-year this year to start, and I hope we will be announcing the allocations of that money relatively soon.

Some forces are going for this in a big way straightaway. I know the Met police is recruiting between 300 and 400 police officers a month at the moment, which is all good news. However, I would just counter the direct connection that a number of Members make between levels of crime and numbers of police officers, because the connection is not just about inputs; it is also about what we are doing. I remind Members that, notwithstanding the fact that we have fewer police officers today, overall crime is 35% lower than it was 10 years ago. For example, police officer numbers were much higher in the ’80s and ’90s than in the ’50s and ’60s, yet crime was much higher too. Focus and priority is as important as the number of police officers.

[Dr Drew]

One of the problems in the retail sector now is that some shopkeepers are just giving up reporting the crime. The Government have to grasp the issue of serious under-reporting.

[Kit Malthouse]

I always say the same thing when people tell me about under-reporting, which is that we must urge everybody to report every possible crime, because modern policing is all about data. The police respond to numbers. If they see numbers, feel the numbers and see the pattern of behaviour, they will respond. It is a bit like that old philosophical aphorism: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, did it actually happen? If a crime is committed, particularly in a large rural constituency such as mine, and it is not reported, as far as the police know, it never happened. Data is absolutely key. I urge all shop owners to report every crime.

The right hon. Member for Delyn raised the impact of serious and organised crime. He is quite right that high-profile thefts by serious and organised crime need to be addressed, not least the demolition and stealing of cash machines, which we see in quite a lot of rural constituencies, including my own. As I hope the right hon. Gentleman knows, we are undertaking a serious and organised crime review over the next few weeks, which I hope will give us some strategy and point us to the future.

I am grateful to hon. Members for what has been an important debate. I hope that I have outlined some of the work that the Government have done, and will hopefully do more of in future, to make sure that everybody—shop workers and shoppers alike—will have fun and will exchange money for presents and gifts in the run-up to Christmas, safely and happily, now and in the years to come.