Retail Crime: Effects

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating my noble friend Lord Hannett of Everton on initiating this debate and on his work on this subject over many years. I also serve on the Justice and Home Affairs Committee and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, indicated, we completed a short inquiry into shop theft last month. It may have been a short inquiry, but I found the evidence we had deeply shocking, as confirmed by the contributions today. So I welcome the chance to say a little, although most of my key points have already been used up by other Members.

I start with the expressions “shoplifting” and “shop theft”. We had a witness, Professor Emmeline Taylor, who said that shoplifting had

“connotations of being trivial, petty and somehow victimless”.

Years ago, “shoplifting” seemed to be an expression for schoolboys picking up a bag of sweets on their way home—not acceptable and quite wrong, but so different from what we are faced with today. We have already heard the statistics: in the year to March 2024, 443,995 incidents of shop theft were reported to the police, up 30% on the previous year. But it is very clear that any of the statistics we have are, as somebody said to us, a drop in the ocean. A vast amount of money has been taken from retailers—and, therefore, from us—through customer theft, which has doubled in the last year.

The first key point is that incidents of shop theft are seriously underreported, and a lot of the problems stem from the perception that it is not as big a problem as it really is. There is a further perception that shop theft is not treated seriously by the police—that may be unfair to them, but that is the perception. That inadequate response attributed to the police risks undermining confidence in them and indeed in the wider criminal justice system. If a retailer phones for help and nothing happens, confidence in the whole system has been lost. One thing that really shocked our committee was how highly organised some of the shoplifting is: there are whole groups of criminals who send people out to steal particular items, which they can resell all too easily elsewhere. It is a highly organised operation.

Some of the key points that came out to me represent for the Minister and the Government an agenda for action—not just ending the use of the term “shoplifting”. Of course, we all welcome the Government’s commitment to creating a new offence of assaulting a shop worker. It is intolerable that people who serve us when we do our shopping should be in fear of attacks that happen all too frequently. It is intolerable that that should be a way of life for them. As my noble friend said, it is a sign of how we, as a country, are sinking below the level where we used to be.

One other issue that came through to us was that, if an offence is committed within one police area, it seems to attract less attention than if the offence extends across more than one police area. Yet these thieves start small—or they start in one area—and then they move. So there should not be this limiting definition. We welcome that the Government will repeal the section in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 that in practice decriminalises shop theft where the value of the goods is under £200. Again, that means that there is no reporting and that it is not treated seriously enough by the powers that be—all of which adds to this very serious situation.

It is clear that we need new regulations to make it harder to sell stolen goods anonymously on online marketplaces. When things are stolen, it is too easy for them to be marketed anonymously online, which is surely not acceptable. Of course, we need new technologies wherever we can have them. If we are going to use facial recognition, there have to be safeguards, but these do exist. Certainly, we need all possible new technologies to deal with this. We need the maximum co-operation between the retail sector, the police, local councils and local communities. Only if we have such co-operation can we tackle the problem with confidence.

The Minister has an interesting task because the agenda set by this House will give him quite a lot to think about. I hope he can convert it into action—that will make a difference, and it will make the lives of many of the retail workers in this country more tolerable than they are now. In fact, it will make us a more law-abiding country.

Small Boat Crossings

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I cannot give the noble Lord an exact figure today, but I will ensure that I write to him with an updated figure. We had this debate a couple of weeks back with a Member from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I included a figure then but I do not have a figure in front of me, so I will need to update that and give it to the noble Lord. As we did in the debate we had in this place two to three weeks ago, I will set out in that reply how we are seeking to protect children appropriately by ensuring that we deal with local authorities in Kent and elsewhere—and to find those missing children, of whom there are approximately still 90, who went missing under the previous Government’s regime.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, my question is based on having been to Calais about a year and a half ago and talked to the NGOs working with people who were trying to get on the boats. Their feeling was that some of the people who got to Calais went because they had no advice about what was in their best interests. If there were some social workers or others in the Calais area, they might be able to give these people—young people, many of them—some better advice than simply saying that the only future for them is to get on the boats. But that is a sensible policy only if it is backed up by our willingness to take in those who have a connection with this country, particularly on the basis of family reunion.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend speaks with authority on this matter. This Government are trying to better engage with our European partners, and France in particular, on how we deal with this problem in Calais and other parts of northern France. One of those issues will be not just the policing and action at ports or on beaches but what we need to do up stream. The Prime Minister will be engaged with a number of European nations to try to look at that upstream element. It is important that we do that.

Because the figure is now in front of me, I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that we have had 9,400 returns since 5 July this year, which indicates that economic movement is not acceptable behaviour when there are legal routes for application to come to the United Kingdom.

Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There was an enhanced incentivised funding programme in operation for Kent County Council, which gave support of £15,000 for transfers within two working days and £6,000 for transfers within five working days. Those schemes are coming to an end because the pressure is not there as it was, but that support was put in place to help Kent to deal with the initial challenges.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, what the Minister said about the hotels being cleared is of course good news. What is happening to any children who arrive at the moment? If they are not going to hotels, is he satisfied that local authorities have the resources and the foster families to look after them?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Currently, in the event of unaccompanied children arriving at a port of entry in the United Kingdom, the first port of call is to provide support via local authorities, which give proper safeguarding opportunities and responsibilities for those individual under-18s. Again, my objective overall and that of the Government in having the border control system is to ensure that we help to reduce the number of children coming here, exploited by gangmasters and by others, and that we deal with those who come here in a humane and effective way.

Illegal Migrants

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord hits a very strong button on that issue. He will know, I hope, that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary visited Italy only this week—or maybe at the end of last week—for a meeting of the G7 that looked at the whole issue of tackling criminal gangs, but also at some of the long-term underlying causes and why those movements are taking place. It is in all our interests to ensure that we tackle that, and stop the flow that then falls prey to those criminal gangs that exploit very vulnerable people from countries such as the one he mentioned. Those gangs take money from them for a visit that is futile because, if they are in this country illegally and do not have asylum claims, they will be returned to their home nation.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the thrust of what my noble friend said, but I ask him to confirm that we must be careful about the use of “illegal” as applied to people who have crossed the channel. The traffickers are reprehensible people, but that does not mean that anybody who comes across the channel is an illegal person. They are still entitled to claim asylum.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Absolutely—my noble friend makes a valid point. My concern is that criminal gangs exploit people who either wish to come here illegally or are being duped when they potentially have legal asylum routes. We need to tackle those gangs at source, which is why we have put £75 million into border control, why we are working with international partners to deal with those issues, and why, slow though progress is initially, we will make an indent in that criminal gang activity.

King’s Speech

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish the new Minister well. He started very well, and I am delighted that all the effort that many of us put into canvassing during the election resulted in people like him getting to where he is; it was all worth while. I differ very much from the previous contribution, but I am not sure this is quite the occasion when we can debate it. I welcome the chance to debate it on another day.

I want to talk a bit about justice and a bit about asylum. I clearly understand why the Government have had to go in for the early release scheme. I remember when I was in the Commons in the early 1980s, and the prison population went up from 40,000 to 44,000. We thought that we were heading for a disaster. Where are we now? We are getting nearer to 90,000. I do not understand why, relative to our population, we have the largest prison population in Europe. Surely our fellow citizens are not more criminal than those of other countries.

I am concerned about the extra pressure that the prisoner release scheme will put on probation officers. I know the Government are going to recruit some more, but there is another issue. I understand that the function or the role of probation officers has changed in recent years. It has become more limited and more a matter of making sure that people behave when they are under probation. I think probation officers had a wider remit in the past. I wonder whether my noble friend would look at that as part of his remit.

Some time ago, I spoke to a police officer who told me of a very distressing incident when a young man mugged an elderly woman quite seriously. The police officer said to me, “Yes, the young man was caught and will end up in Feltham”. The police officer also went to the home of the young man and found a terrible situation. There was just his mother, who was spaced out on drugs. The place was completely derelict. The police officer said to me, “After Feltham, that young man will go back to the same environment, and it won’t help at all”. Unless we tackle the environment and do something about distressing situations such as that, we will have the revolving door revolving and revolving.

We need a more radical approach than just an early release scheme. I know my noble friend is aware of that, but we do. A friend of mine, Andrew Coyle, wrote a book called Prisons of the World. I especially commend a chapter called, “Towards a better way”. I cannot paraphrase him, so I quote him:

“We need a more radical solution to the current prison crisis and it may lie in what has become known as Justice Reinvestment. Very broadly, this is a process which involves assessing the total resources, financial and other, that are currently expended on the criminal justice system; evaluating what benefits members of the public and taxpayers get from this expenditure; and considering whether there might be other ways of distributing these considerable resources to provide a better return on the investment”.


One day, when we have a longer debate on penal reform than is possible just now, I will develop those arguments. I think they may be helpful.

I turn to asylum seekers and refugees. The Home Secretary probably has the toughest job in government, and I very much welcome the advice she gave me over the years when I contributed to debates on this issue. Of course we are all shocked that the total cost of the Rwanda scheme has been £700 million. I am delighted the Government said, I think today or yesterday, that the 125,000 or so people who were prevented from claiming asylum by the Illegal Migration Act will now be able to do so.

I was in Calais a few months ago. It was a very depressing situation. Some of the people there said that they could not apply for asylum in France because they were fingerprinted on arrival in Greece or Italy. That meant they were virtually precluded from claiming asylum back in Greece or Italy, or from coming to this country.

I also met some young people, again in Calais, who had no money to pay traffickers. They said to me that they were hoping to be offered a free lift on a boat on condition that they steered the boat. They would be regarded as traffickers by us, but actually they are young people who have been caught in this very dangerous situation.

We need safe routes for child refugees. We need to establish a better way of achieving family reunion. I agree with the comments made about a better relationship with France.

One last challenge is that we need to find a way of supporting local communities who want to welcome asylum seekers, refugees and others in such a way that we have proper community cohesion. That is a real challenge for this Government.