LONDON – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain will toughen measures to tackle shoplifting and violence against shop staff, after complaints from retailers, including Marks & Spencer Group, about the scale of the problem.
Ministers plan to roll out new technology nationwide to help retailers share real-time CCTV footage with police, allowing thieves to be caught more quickly, Mr Starmer said in a speech on April 27 to the Usdaw trade union.
“We’re currently reforming the police across the country so we can free up their time and their money to focus more on street policing, neighbourhood policing, cracking down on anti-social behavior,” Mr Starmer told members of Usdaw, which represents workers in British retail, among other industries.
“We are standing firm together against the disgraceful crime of shop theft.”
Mr Starmer’s comments come as British retailers face a post-pandemic spike in shoplifting blamed in part on cost-of-living pressures amid faltering living standards.
M&S retail director Thinus Keeve said in April that shoplifting is becoming “more brazen, more organised and more aggressive”.
J Sainsbury’s chief executive officer Simon Roberts said last week he would welcome a regular police presence in stores to deter theft and violence.
Charges for shop theft have risen 17 per cent in the latest statistics, Mr Starmer said, though he acknowledged more has to be done to end what he called a shoplifting “free-for-all” across Britain.
The Crime and Policing Bill is in the final stages of Parliament scrutiny, the government said in a statement.
That will remove the £200 (S$345) threshold where goods were considered “low value” and not subject to prosecution. It also makes assaulting a retail worker a specific criminal offence.
The government has been consulting on the use of facial recognition and biometrics so that new laws can allow police to use this new technology to catch criminals. Retailers, including Sainsbury’s and Asda, have been trialling facial recognition in some stores to better tackle retail crime.
“The rise in organised crime is particularly worrying as gangs systematically target one store after another across the country,” Ms Lucy Whing, adviser on crime policy at the British Retail Consortium, said last week.
Security tags on everyday items like meat, alcohol and baby formula are commonplace in Britain.
Still, it is not just criminal gangs behind the shoplifting wave, according to supermarket bosses.
M&S chairman Archie Norman told the Telegraph newspaper the growing use of self-service checkouts has broken the “human link” between shoppers and retailers and made it easier to steal.
Around 100 police officers were called to Clapham, south London in March after teenagers swarmed the high street, leading to arrests, including on suspicion of shoplifting. The gatherings were organised on social media. BLOOMBERG
