Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle shoplifting.

In the last year of the previous government, shop theft soared to a twenty-year high, with more and more offenders using violence and abuse against shopworkers. We will not stand for this.Everybody has a right to feel safe at their place of work and the Government is committed to tackling retail crime.

We will introduce a new offence of assaulting a retail worker to protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores. We will also end the effective immunity, introduced by the previous Government, granted to shop theft of goods of and under £200. This will remove any perception that offenders will escape punishment.

We will provide £100k additional funding next financial year for the National Police Chiefs' Council to give further training to police and retailers on prevention tactics.

We will continue to crack down on the organised gangs targeting retailers. We will provide £5 million over the next three years to continue to fund a specialist analysis team within Opal, the National Policing Intelligence Unit for serious organised acquisitive crime.

We will also invest £2 million over the next three years in the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) which provides a resource for both police and businesses to learn, share and support each other to prevent and combat crime.