A surge in shoplifting under the Conservatives has led to shoppers paying a 10p “crime tax” on every basket, businesses have warned, as a Home Office minister vowed an end to the “shameful neglect” of retail crime.
At the Co-op Group and shopworker union Usdaw’s retail crime summit, supermarket bosses detailed how organised gangs are operating with effective immunity, stealing huge amounts of stock to be resold on the black market.
Midcounties Co-operative head of store support Chris Chandler told attendees how staff are facing “being dragged across the shop floor by their hair, attacked in car parks and attacked with hammers, knives and threatened with guns”.
“It is genuinely unprecedented… I have been in retail for 28 years and I have never seen crime like it in our stores,” he warned.
And, setting out the financial cost to retailers and the public, the Association of Convenience Stores said crime against retailers is now leading to an extra 10p “crime tax” per transaction.
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson pointed to figures from a recent Usdaw study of 5,500 retail staff, which set out how one in five suffered a violent attack last year, more than double the figure two years ago.
Meanwhile, almost half reported facing threats of violence.
“This is the shocking reality of being a shopworker in 21st century Britain,” Ms Johnson said, promising that Labour will “end the shameful neglect of shoplifting over the last ten years”.
The party has promised to create a specific offence covering attacks on shopworkers and to end the so-called “shoplifters charter” introduced by the Conservatives, which created a category of “low-value shoplifting” for thefts of goods worth under £200.
The category led to the police deprioritising enforcement of the low level cases, which Ms Johnson said “left businesses and retail workers at the mercy of criminals”.
As well as highlighting British Retail Consortium (BRC) figures that showed the £1.8bn cost to shops of theft, Ms Johnson said staff are facing a “wave of abuse, threats and violence”.
“Just last week I met with a shop worker in my own constituency who sent me CCTV footage of him being punched 50 times by a customer he was trying to help,” Ms Johnson told the conference.
She said: “It must stop. The era of criminals acting with impunity, built up through years of Tory rule, is over.
“This is a Government committed to our mission for safer streets, for safer communities, and for a safer Britain, and we have a plan to get there.
“With a new offence of assault of a shopworker, investment from the Treasury, by scrapping the Conservatives’ shoplifters charter, and by putting neighbourhood police officers back in our communities, back on the beat, and back in the service of the public once again.”
Last year, former policing minister Chris Philp urged members of the public to step in when they see thieves shoplifting by making citizen’s arrests. He told a fringe event at the Conservative Party’s conference: “The wider public do have the power of citizen’s arrest and, where it’s safe to do so, I would encourage that to be used because if you do just let people walk in, take stuff and walk out without proper challenge, including potentially a physical challenge, then again it will just escalate.
“While I want the faster and better police response, the police can’t be everywhere all the time.”
Ms Johnson added: “His bright idea? His solution to a shoplifting epidemic that was occurring on his watch? Citizens arrests.
“He urged members of the public to ‘have a go’ when they saw thieves stealing goods, DIY policing. A statement that is so deeply irresponsible that it’s almost laughable. That’s how bad it got.
“But it gets worse. Chris Philp is now the shadow home secretary in Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative top team.”
