Lord debates impact of retail crime

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On Thursday 5 December, members of the House of Lords discussed retail crime and its consequences on workers, the community and local economies.

Debate

Lord Hannett of Everton (Labour), former General Secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, put forward the debate.

This was a general debate. During debates, members put their experience to good use to discuss current issues and draw the government's attention to concerns. 

Members speaking

Contributing members included:

Baroness Crawley (Labour), vice president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute
Lord Kirkham (Conservative), founder of DFS Furniture and former director of Iceland Foods
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative), former minister in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and director of corporate affairs at Tesco.
Lord Tope (Liberal Democrats), co-president of London Councils and former member of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Opening the debate, Lord Hannett of Everton said:

'We need better co-ordination between the police and retailers, ensuring that these hardened career criminals can no longer leave retail workers living in fear.'

Lord Kirkham added:

'The police are overstretched, and too often they are unable to attend stores when they are called. Security guards are legally constrained: they are shackled in their inability to search or detain offenders before the police arrive.'

Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour), Minister of State at the Home Office, responded on behalf of the government:

'Shop theft is up 29% in the year to June 2024 compared with the previous year. The British Retail Consortium crime survey has shown that around 475,000 incidents of violence occur each year.

'Among the actions that we will bring forward and put in place is a specific offence of attacking shop workers.'