Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance her Department provides to businesses on preventing retail crime; and what the total cost of retail crime was in 2016.

The Government recognises the impact that retail crime has on businesses. The British Retail Consortium has, for example, estimated that the direct financial cost of crime to the UK retail industry was £660 million in 2015-16.

We have not issued general guidance on preventing the different forms of crime that can impact on businesses, which includes shoplifting, criminal damage and fraud. We do, however, work closely with the retail sector and I [the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism] have met with representative bodies including the British Retail Consortium and the Association of Convenience Stores, who are also represented on the National Retail Crime Steering Group, to understand better the crime issues that affect the sector and how we can best work together to prevent and respond to these crimes.