Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce shop theft in Surrey Heath constituency.

Shop theft continues to increase at an unacceptable level, up 20% on year up to December 2024. We will not stand for this.

We are providing £5 million over the next three years to continue to fund a specialist analysis team within Opal, the National Policing Intelligence Unit for serious organised acquisitive crime, to crack down on the organised gangs targeting retailers.

We are also investing £2 million over the next three years in the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) which provides a resource for both police and businesses to learn, share and support each other to prevent and combat crime.

Via the Crime and Policing Bill we will repeal the legislation which makes shop theft of and below £200 a summary-only offence, which means it can only be tried a magistrate’s court. This will send a clear message that any level of shop theft is illegal and will be taken seriously. Also included in the Bill is a new offence of assaulting a retail worker to protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores.

I chair the Retail Crime Forum which brings together the retail sector, security providers and law enforcement agencies to ensure we understand the needs of all retailers and to promote collaboration, share best practice and to work collectively to tackle the serious issue of retail crime. This includes the development of a new strategy to tackle shop theft published by policing, retail sector representatives and industry as part of collective efforts to combat shop theft.

The strategy builds on previous progress made by police and retailers but provides a more comprehensive and intelligence-led approach to tackle all perpetrators of shop theft – not just organised criminal gangs.