Prime Minister Keir Starmer has declared that the Government is “calling time on the free for all” on shop theft.
Speaking at the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers’ Annual Delegate Meeting in Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, he set out how the Crime and Policing Bill, which mainly applies to England and Wales, will take includes a number of measures to tackle retail crime. These include assault against shopworkers being made a standalone crime (as is already the case in Scotland) and the scrapping of the £200 shoplifting threshold.
The Prime Minister welcomed the early signs of progress, with charges for shop theft up nearly 17 per cent, but said the scale of shop theft and abuse remains unacceptable.
He said: “Working people, grafters – go to work, do the right thing, keep our high streets thriving, and yet too often they are abused or assaulted by people who think they can get away with it and just cheat the system. It’s disgraceful.
“We are 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, and cracking down on anti-social behaviour. We’ve already got an extra 3,000 neighbourhood officers on the streets [in England and Wales], and there’s more to come.
“We’ve scrapped the ridiculous regulation where thieves stealing goods worth less than £200 would not be properly held to account. That was a shoplifters’ charter, and we’ve ended it. We’ve toughened up punishment too. We’re giving police stronger powers, making the abuse and assault of retail workers a specific crime and giving you the same protections as emergency workers.
“I’m not blind to how big a challenge this is. But the number of people charged has gone up by 17% in the latest stats. Shop theft is down – only slightly – but the tide could be turning. We are calling time on the free for all, standing firm, together, against the disgraceful crime of shop theft.”
In addition, the Government is investing £5m in OPAL, a specialist policing intelligence unit, to supercharge intelligence led policing, identify the most harmful offenders and disrupt the organised gangs targeting shops.
