Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to support high street retailers affected by shoplifting.

The level of shop theft remains unacceptable. But our action to restore neighbourhood policing is making a difference – including delivering more than 3,100 additional police officers and PCSOs into neighbourhood roles since March 2025, two months ahead of schedule. There are signs the tide is turning, with a small fall in shop theft offences by 1% in the year ending December 2025 compared with the previous year. Shop theft charges rose 17% in just one year, showing police are taking this seriously.

We are equipping the police to fight the organised crime gangs that are often responsible for driving shop theft across the country. Our £5m investment into OPAL (a specialist policing unit) will supercharge intelligence-led policing to identify offenders, disrupt the tactics used to target shops, and bring more criminals to justice.

We are driving close partnership between the police and retail sector through the Retail Crime Forum. This includes tackling the most prolific retail offenders - where a few individuals can drive a large proportion of the local crime problem. Prolific offenders represented just 9% of the offending population but accounted for 52% of all convictions between 2000 to 2021.

We are working across Government, with police forces and the retail sector to develop a pilot model to identify, target and intervene with those individuals causing unacceptable harm in our communities.