Anti-social Behaviour and Shoplifting

Question

14:36:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to tackle anti-social behaviour and shoplifting.

This Government will tackle anti-social behaviour by rebuilding visible neighbourhood policing, with 13,000 additional neighbourhood officers and PCSOs, and will bring in new respect orders to enable police to ban persistent anti-social offenders from our town centres. We will also introduce a new offence of assaulting a retail worker and end the effective immunity for shop theft of goods under £200.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer. I was pleased to see that safer streets are a priority for this Government. Will the Minister agree that anti-social behaviour and crimes such as shoplifting, aggressive begging and phone theft are anything but low-level and can blight the lives of local residents and businesses? Many people who work in shops feel like they are living in a war zone. Will he agree that anti-social behaviour can so often be the canary down the coal mine and tell a wider story about what kind of society we are living in? Finally, will there be a focus on targeting often a small number of hardened criminals who are responsible for terrorising local residents and shops? Will the police and courts take this more seriously and consider the use of technology such as facial recognition?

I am pleased to say to my noble friend that it is a “yes” to every point she has raised. Anti-social behaviour and shop theft are not minor crimes. They cause disruption in our communities. Shop theft in particular costs retailers across the nation millions of pounds, which is passed on to us as customers, and it is not acceptable. That is why, on shop theft, we are going to end the £200 effective immunity. For shop workers, we will protect them by introducing a new offence, because they are very often upholding the law in their shops on alcohol, tobacco and other sales, for us in this House.

My Lords, while I agree with everything the noble Baroness has just said, will the Minister join me in the hope that the sentencing review will result in fewer women being sent to prison unnecessarily?

I do not wish to pre-empt the sentencing review undertaken by David Gauke, a former Conservative Justice Secretary, which was commissioned by the Lord Chancellor. Self-evidently, it is in the interests of society to have fewer women go to prison and to have an increase in community-based sentences. David Gauke and the Lord Chancellor will look at both of those matters as part of the review.

My Lords, what assessment have the Government made about increased shoplifting being a result of increasing poverty in our society?

As always, shoplifting takes place for a range of reasons. But I will not excuse shoplifting and shop theft under any circumstances, because they are still crimes. I grew up on a very poor estate in Liverpool and in Cheshire. It was not acceptable to shoplift then and it is not acceptable now. We need to ensure that we tackle that by having neighbourhood policing, a greater emphasis and focus for the police on shop theft and greater support to retailers. I appreciate the noble Earl’s view on poverty: we look at poverty in the round and put measures in for a range of reasons to lift people out of poverty, to ensure that they can live reasonable, productive and effective lives.

My Lords, the Minister has said that, before introducing respect orders, the Government will run a number of pilots, which is a very good idea. But current laws on anti-social behaviour have never been thoroughly reviewed and the Home Office does not even keep records on how they are being used at the moment. So, before the Government introduce these new respect orders, will they agree to review the current laws and how they are working, so that lessons learned could be used to inform the pilots?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that comment. We will keep all legislation under review. Again, after 14 years out of office, we want to review some of the measures: how they have been utilised and what can be done to improve community resilience. The most important thing we can do is certainly pilot the respect orders, but a really important issue will be the 13,000 neighbourhood police and community support officers, who can embed themselves more in the community, can look at what responses are required, can work with people such as shopkeepers in relation to the shop theft that my noble friend Lady Hazarika mentioned, and can work with the community to look at what could best be utilised to gain the support of the community in reducing crime.

My Lords, the increasing theft of child/baby milk formula suggests that criminal justice measures alone will not deal with this problem. So what proposals do the Government intend to bring forward to have a discussion with those who produce and sell child/baby milk formula, in order to address this issue and the increasing impact on the poorest families of the rising cost of that formula?

I hope I can reassure my noble friend and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, that poverty is an important issue for this Government. If there are trends in the type of theft that is occurring, such as theft of baby milk, that will indicate some element of poverty-related theft. But we have to tackle poverty holistically, looking at a range of measures on social welfare, housing and the support we are giving through minimum wage increases and other things to ensure that we can help raise people out of poverty. The Government have a target to lift the poverty level. But that still does not excuse theft, which has to be at the heart of this Government’s approach. Shop theft is a key responsibility of mine at the Home Office and we will bring forward legislative measures, if supported by both Houses, to tackle it.

My Lords, having spent most of my working life working in a shop, I welcome the protections for shop workers and the Minister’s comments about the seriousness of shoplifting and crime. What encouragement can he give to law enforcement officers to also take this seriously?

The 2014 Act that changed the threshold and put a £200 threshold on shop theft did not change the law, but it changed the approach that law enforcement officers took: thefts under £200 were seen as thefts that we did not need to respond to or go out to. I regard that as unacceptable, which is why we are changing the law to abolish that £200 threshold to allow police to focus on the issue. Neighbourhood policing will help that. The shop workers’ defence and the aggravated offence of attacks on a shop worker are there to protect shop workers who are upholding the law in shops as the first form of defence. I have been a member of the shop workers’ union for 44 years. This is an important issue to the union—it has campaigned on it for 20 years—and it is an important issue for both Houses to recognise. I look forward to taking legislation through this House in due course.

My Lords, the original question was entirely right: the repeat victim/offender location theory applies to both these offences. A small percentage of offenders account for a very high majority of offences. Would the Minister agree with me that there are three things police can do to bear down on this? One, as already indicated, is to attend the scene of an event and see what has happened, whether it is shoplifting or anti-social behaviour, rather than make a phone call. The second is that a linking offence or a linking event is the supply of alcohol to underage people through pubs and off-licences. The third is the uncontrolled street-level dealing of drugs. These are susceptible to some simple tactics. It is not an issue of resources: it is about uniformity of application and method. Perhaps the Government have an opportunity to make sure the police apply all three of those.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord; he makes three valuable points which we will certainly take on board. My right honourable friend Diana Johnson, the Policing Minister in the House of Commons, has recently chaired a round table which I attended with the chief constable of north Wales, who is the lead on shop theft, to look at how we can co-ordinate police forces better across county lines, how we can follow up on the points the noble Lord mentioned in terms of onward use of criminal activity such as alcohol and/or drugs, and how we can, through Operation Pegasus, resource and examine those serious shop thefts that are involving not just shoplifters on an individual basis, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and others, but those criminal gangs that are organising very strong shoplifting hits. Operation Pegasus has just received additional resources from this Government to support its work.

My Lords, I am sure that across this House we would agree that no shop worker should go to work afraid for their safety. But is the Minister aware of Home Office research showing that the majority of shoplifting offences are carried out by hard-drug users? Can the Minister tell us what steps government can take to reduce the stigma and shame around addiction so that more users seek help?

I am grateful to my noble friend. One of the key things the last Government did—as in the last Labour Government, from 2005 to 2010—was ensure we had a number of community-based sentences and community orders to support people who had drug or alcohol addictions to overcome those addictions and therefore stop shoplifting because of those addictions. I certainly hope the sentencing review will consider that in the round. When the measures we have brought forward come to this House and to the House of Commons in due course, I hope that issue of how we tackle persistent offenders and intervene on their behaviour will be central to our purpose in passing legislation downstream.