Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of changes in the level of shop theft in England and Wales in the last three years; and what role (a) the government (b) Police and Crime Commissioners and (c) local police forces can play to tackle the root causes of such theft.

Statistics on shoplifting offences reported to the police are recorded in the crime statistics published by the Office for National Statistics. The statistics can be accessed via their website at www.ons.gov.uk.

The Home Office Commercial Victimisation Survey 2016 provides an analysis of crimes against businesses and shows that crimes against the wholesale and retail sector fell between 2012 and 2014, followed by a small increase between 2014 and 2016. According to the Survey, 67 per cent of the crimes against the sector in 2016 were shoplifting incidents.

As part of the response to these crimes, we encourage all retailers to report shoplifting to the police whenever it occurs, so that these crimes can be investigated and, where appropriate, the offenders brought to justice. It must, however, remain a matter for chief constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, as operational leaders and elected local representatives, to decide how best to deploy resources to respond to these crimes. At the national level, the police, Police and Crime Commissioners, relevant government departments and the retail sector are all represented on the National Retail Crime Steering Group, which ensures a collaborative response to crimes that affect the retail sector.