Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce incidents of shoplifting in the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency.

Driving down retail crime remains a key priority as set out in the Plan for Change.

The central aim of our police reforms is to protect and revitalise neighbourhood policing. We are lifting national responsibilities off local forces so they focus on tackling local issues, like fighting retail crime.

We will deliver 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel into roles across England and Wales by the end of this Parliament. By February 2026 we had delivered more than 3,100 additional police officers and PCSOs into neighbourhood roles. The first-year growth target was first exceeded in January 2026, two months ahead of schedule.

Through our Crime and Policing Bill, this Government has introduced a new specific standalone offence of assaulting a retail worker to help tackle the epidemic of shop theft and violence towards shop workers that we have seen in recent years and protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores.

This bespoke offence will send a clear signal to perpetrators that assaults on retail workers are unacceptable and won’t go unpunished. It will also ensure that assaults on retail workers are separately recorded so that we know the true scale of the problem, enabling the police to respond accordingly

Additionally, we are removing the legislation which makes shop theft of and below £200 a summary-only offence, sending a clear message that any level of shop theft is illegal and will be taken seriously

A small proportion of offenders drive a disproportionate level of crime: around 9% of offenders account for over half of all convictions nationally. More specifically, prolific offenders are responsible for c.70% of all theft offences. We are supporting police forces to better tackle this cohort and are now working on a plan to pilot strengthened approaches in select force areas.

We are providing £7 million over a three‑year period covering 2025 to 2028, to tackle retail crime, including continuing to fund a specialist policing team – in partnership with the retail sector - to better understand the tactics used by organised retail crime gangs and identify more offenders.