Philip Dunne is MP for Ludlow and chaired the party's Retail Crime Commission, which reported yesterday. He will be discussing the issues raised here at a the British Retail Consortium-sponsored fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester at 10am on Monday 5th October.
For all Labour’s tough talk on tackling crime and the causes of crime, there is mounting evidence that after 12 years of Government rhetoric, high streets and local neighbourhood shopping areas are suffering record levels of theft. As if this wasn’t bad enough, violent theft is also rising – up 11% in the last year for which statistics are available.
Theft from retailers also provides one of the principal sources of funding for drug abuse. Britain now ranks third worst out of 28 industrialised countries in the prevalence of serious drug use amongst adults as well as 15-16 year olds. The drugs menace accounts for many of the social ills afflicting young people, their families and their communities.
All of this has a debilitating impact on local communities. People become fearful of visiting their local shops where the threat of anti-social behaviour in and around retail premises and violence and abuse can become routinely accepted by shop staff, who often have to suffer the added perception of crime in retail premises as victimless.
But retail crime is not 'victimless'. Shop staff and their customers should not be subject to intimidation and violence. Retail businesses suffer, reducing profitability and forcing up costs to consumers. Repeated anti-social behaviour directed towards shops can force closure, depriving a community of retail convenience and reducing the quality of life for residents. This has the greatest impact on the most vulnerable, particularly elderly or young families.
Labour’s response has been pitiful. Retail crime has been downgraded in importance by the Government in its latest Policing Green Paper and is not even included within the existing monitoring or performance regime for police forces. Meanwhile fixed penalty tickets issued by Police Forces for shop theft have increased by 14% in the last year. Yet these sanctions are routinely abused with many offenders, especially serial offenders, refusing to pay their fixed penalties.
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