Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the causes of increased levels of retail crime.

Retail crime, including shoplifting and violence and abuse, is not acceptable and the Government takes this issue very seriously. I expect police to take a zero-tolerance approach to it.

Police forces across England and Wales have recently committed to pursuing any available evidence where there is a reasonable chance it could lead to catching a perpetrator and solving a crime. For retail crime this could include reviewing CCTV evidence and using the Police National Database for facial searches to identify suspects where appropriate to do so.

The Home Office works closely with retailers and trade organisations, including the British Retail Consortium, Association of Convenience Stores and USDAW, and police partners via the National Retail Crime Steering Group (NRCSG) to understand the trends in crime affecting retailers and to ensure a robust response. In recent weeks, I have met senior policing leads and retail sector representatives to discuss the recent increase in shoplifting and what we can do together to tackle it.

The Government legislated to introduce a statutory aggravating factor for assault against any public facing worker via section 156 of the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This ensures the courts treat the public-facing nature of a victim’s role as an aggravating factor when considering the sentence for an offence.

This week is Safer Business Action Week, where the National Business Crime Centre, police and partners across the country are joining together to tackle business crime in their communities, which has my full support. The week of action will involve Business Reductions Partnerships (BCRPs), Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and the private security industry working with local police forces to deliver a focused operation with joint patrols, the targeted intervention of offenders and a range of crime prevention activity including raising awareness with the public. This week also promotes the ShopKind campaign, which signals to everybody how important this issue is and reminds customers to consider their behaviour towards shop staff.

This Government has also given the police more resources to deal with crimes, including retail crime, and, thanks to our successful uplift programme through which we recruited over 20,000 additional officers, we now have a record number of officers across forces in England and Wales.