Castleford in West Yorkshire, the birthplace of sculptor Henry Moore, was a town in decline after the collapse of heavy industry. Street-drinking and low-level antisocial behaviour was blighting the high street. Despite a £24m Town Fund award from the Conservatives for regeneration, locals were staying away.
Membership of his Castleford Town Centre Business Review Group grew from 12 in 2020 to 70 now. They have a WhatsApp group to help identify thieves quickly; because members can pool CCTV images, the police are able to secure more convictions.
“Because everybody’s taking accountability for their own areas, we finally feel like we’re getting somewhere,” Barker said. It’s an example of a community striking back against the blight of shoplifting.
Head to any town centre around the country and you’ll hear a similar story: shoplifting is out of control. In England and Wales, two items are stolen a minute according to Home Office figures. Meanwhile the British Retail Consortium reports violence and abuse against shopworkers rose by 50 per cent in the 12 months to September, with more than 2,000 incidents on average every day.
On Tuesday, Cooper will publish a new Policing and Crime Bill to reverse the so-called “shoplifter’s’ charter” introduced in 2014, by which theft of goods under £200 is considered “low value”. The Government is seeking to reverse the trend of increasingly brazen and violent acts of theft because perpetrators don’t fear any consequences. The number of fixed penalty notices handed out decreased by 98 per cent over the decade to 2024.
This isn’t just the crime of weighing out oranges and paying for cheaper apples at the self-service till, although ministers hope that removing the £200 limit will make shoppers think twice before stealing. It’s also about tackling the gangs who routinely swarm into supermarkets and town centres like hyenas, attacking shop security and overwhelming local police resources.
Shoplifters are desperate - and it's up to supermarkets to help
Read MoreCatherine Atkinson, the newly elected Labour MP for Derby North, is excited about the changes coming to the city: a new university business school, a new performance venue and a revamp to the Grade II listed market hall. It’s another place benefiting from a Town Fund award under the Tories.
“So many of them had worked all through Covid; their stores are a real part of the community and they were the only human contact for some people every week. When the staff feel unsafe, then it has such a huge impact,” she told The i Paper.
Other measures in the bill include tackling the spiking of drinks, drugs and knife offences. Off-road bikes roaring around estates and e-scooters on pavements will also be targeted, while signal jammers used to steal cars will be banned.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (centre) during a visit to West Yorkshire Police’s Halifax Police Station (Photo: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)
“The vast majority of Labour’s new bill appears to constitute recycled ideas from the last government’s Criminal Justice Bill,” Philp told The i Paper. “This is, of course, welcome, but unfortunately, the Labour government’s funding settlement for police in the current financial year is £118m short, leading to the risk of 1,800 officers being cut. You can pass whatever law you like, but Labour is not properly funding police forces, meaning there won’t be enough police to implement these new laws.”
Iceland supermarket boss Richard Walker has demanded a change to the law to allow images of violent shoplifters to be shared on local WhatsApp groups. Ministers are sympathetic to his call and are ironing out whether they need to work around any data protection rules which stop shopkeepers putting up posters of shoplifters in their stores to name and shame prolific thieves.
Cooper has been a keen student of home affairs for 14 years both as Shadow Home Secretary, Chair of the Home Office Select Committee and now in government. She is throwing the weight of years of planning at this enormous crime bill which contains over fifty new measures.
Labour knows it needs to be effective quickly in a country sick and tired of low-level crime. If this bill works, she will have made a significant contribution to the party’s next general election campaign.
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