Lord Hannett of Everton (Lab)

My Lords, brevity is probably the call at this time of night. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions; all of them made excellent points—too many to repeat. Again, I thank the Minister for his consistent support on this issue, not just here in this House but, prior, in the other House. My noble friend Lady Hazarika gave an example of her real-life experience. I wish that it was a one-off. It was a graphic example of what takes place on a regular basis. I never wanted this to become a political debate, and nor was it—it would be hard to have any separation of support on resolving and challenging this important issue for shop workers. The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, made a point about unanimity. It was interesting to hear that every speaker, irrespective of which party they belong to or have been a member of, knows that this is a joint issue that needs a joint approach. I thank everybody for their support. I hope that, if there is one thing noble Lords take from this debate, it is that the contributions made here today will be so important to retail workers in my union when they realise that, clearly, there are people in this place who care as they do and have articulated it. On the £200 issue, I will finish by saying that I do not believe for one minute that it was intentional for the police not to respond, but the reality is that they were not responding. The real risk here is of retail crime being normalised. It was becoming not acceptable but normalised. It was no longer a shock to hear some of these stats. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, said something that connected with me when he made reference to poverty and retail crime—not in terms of a justification or an explanation but in saying that, in reality, when there are major economic challenges, you have different extremes. There are the gangs, which are there to make money and do not care about the impact, and then there are other people who are more desperate. I do not say that as a justification; I just say that these are the realities. Once again, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. USDAW fully appreciates this, and it has been well received.