Labour blames middle-class shoplifters for pushing up prices

Telegraph

2 days ago

Middle-class shoplifters are responsible for pushing up prices on the high street, the policing and crime minister has claimed.
Dame Diana Johnson has vowed to punish wealthier thieves as part of her crackdown on retail crime, insisting 'there will be consequences' for shoplifters, regardless of their background.
She said: 'It's a crime. If you're middle class, or whichever class you want to determine that you are, it's a crime. That is just not acceptable because we all know that people end up paying higher prices if people are stealing.'
Her comments come as Britain's retailers battle a shoplifting epidemic that is costing them billions of pounds each year.
In a bid to address the issue, the Government plans to invest £200m into neighbourhood policing, and has said it will make assaulting a shop worker a standalone offence.
It has also scrapped previous legislation that made stealing goods worth less than £200 a 'summary-only' low-level offence.
It also plans to develop a 'Fusion Cell' programme for sharing intelligence on retail crime and its perpetrators.
Incidents of retail crime hit their highest level on record in the year leading up to August 2024, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), growing by more than 50pc to hit more than 2,000 incidents a day.
Graham Wynn, a director at the BRC, said: 'The cost of theft has also risen to over £2.2bn a year, pushing up prices for honest shoppers and damaging the customer experience.'
Much of the crime wave has been blamed on organised crime gangs who steal high-value goods such as spirits and meat before selling them on for a profit.
Middle-class crime
However, retail industry bosses have increasingly raised the alarm over shoplifting among the middle classes.
Archie Norman, the chairman of Marks & Spencer, first highlighted it as a problem two years ago: 'It's too easy to say it's a cost of living problem. Some of this shoplifting is by gangs. Then you get the middle class.
'With the reduction of service you get in a lot of shops, a lot of people think: 'This didn't scan properly, or it's very difficult to scan these things through, and I shop here all the time. It's not my fault, I'm owed it'.'
Last month, John Nussbaum, director of retail at Kingdom Security, said some shoplifters believed they were 'cheating the system' and did not necessarily see themselves as criminals.
When asked what her message to shoplifters would be, Dame Diana said: 'It's a crime. You are committing a crime.
'During the disorder last year, I remember in Hull, there were young women coming out of Lush because they'd been into Lush to loot, and they were coming out with boxes of toiletries from Lush, thinking that was perfectly fine.
'There were no consequences. We have to get back to the fact that if you steal, if you commit a crime, there will be consequences.'
She also called on landlords not to allow the selling of stolen goods in their venues, amid reports that some pubs were being used by criminals to do so.
She said: 'If you're a pub down the road, then selling that is not part of what you should be doing to protect and support your community.'