Baroness Bray of Coln (Con)

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lords, Lord Hanson and Lord Timpson, to their ministerial posts and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, and my noble friend Lord Goodman on their maiden speeches. I would also like to say how grateful I am to have the opportunity to respond to His Majesty’s gracious Speech by highlighting one of the important issues it raised—indeed, it was raised in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. Shoplifting is a growing problem. It is now often referred to as retail crime because, I am told, calling it shoplifting no longer captures the serious nature of the crime wave hitting the retail sector. There is no doubt that communities up and down the country are becoming increasingly alarmed by the growing impact of retail violence in their local shops. These days, dangerous individuals and gangs operate across the country, very often arriving at their chosen shop armed with knives or other weapons. Anyone who tries to stop them may well be attacked. They disappear within minutes, often having planned their visit by checking out the premises in advance. Their loot is then sold on, typically from a car boot or a shed, or online. Police-recorded crime figures indicate that there were more than 430,000 retail crime offences last year—an increase of 37% over the previous 12-month period. Meanwhile, retail sector surveys put the figure up to 40 times higher, with the British Retail Consortium crime report for this year estimating that it rose to 16.7 million. That is well over 45,000 incidents a day. This tells us just how seriously this criminal activity has already got out of control. The disparity between the two sets of figures also suggests significant under- reporting of incidents to the police. I hope that another benefit of the very welcome new stand-alone offence for attacks on retail workers—it was originally to be introduced by the former Government before the election got under way, but I am delighted to see that the new Government will continue with it—will be to help to encourage retail workers to record and report every incident to the police for a more accurate record. There is, in fact, already a retail crime action plan in place that has brought together retailers and senior police officers. The police have pledged to attend scenes where retail workers have been attacked or an offender has been detained. Pegasus, set up last year with government support, is a partnership between retailers and specialist police officers to share intelligence, photographic evidence from in-store cameras and training for retailers, including how to provide the best possible evidence, including CCTV footage of incidents. This can help to identify the perpetrators. But so much more needs to be done to deal with this growing problem. The police are central to it. They must put this issue higher up their agenda. I think many of us would like to see more police back on patrol on our local streets, knowing their patch, providing important reassurance, and being ready to respond and call in support on our streets when necessary, including being able to call up assistance if a local shop finds itself under attack. This new Government have taken an important step as they start out by recognising that retail crime is becoming a major problem in our towns and cities. Now that they have declared their intention to introduce a new law that makes an attack on a retail worker a specific criminal offence, what will the penalty be? If it is to be an effective deterrent, it will certainly need to be robust and preferably custodial for serious and repeat offenders.