Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the appropriateness of the level of the £200 shoplifting threshold for police investigation.

In 2014 the government changed the law to enable cases of theft from a shop of goods with a value of £200 or less to be dealt with as summary-only offences. This enables certain cases of shop theft to be dealt with as swiftly and efficiently as possible, enabling the police to prosecute uncontested cases in the future.

This change has no bearing on the ability of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute a person for theft from a shop, or on the courts’ powers to punish offenders