'We have to accept police aren't interested': M&S boss says company spends 'a lot of money' to stop shoplifting itself

13 May 2024, 11:29

M&S Chairman on shop theft

The chairman of M&S has said that retail bosses "have to accept police aren't interested" in tackling shoplifting, with his company spending "a lot of money" on its own security.

Archie Norman told LBC's Nick Ferrari that his staff "get very little help from the police" in preventing shop theft, which has risen to record levels in the UK overall.

Mr Norman said that thefts at Marks and Spencers had actually gone down. He attributed that mostly to the company's own efforts.

"We spent a lot of money on it," he said, including on "store detectives", as well as camera systems and other technology.

"Not least, because if somebody is threatened, we can intervene," he added.

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"We get very little help from the police. I mean, I think we have to accept the police are not interested in this sort of crime anymore. Whether we like it or not, that's the way it's gone."

Last October, police chiefs announced a partner scheme with big retailers including John Lewis to tackle shoplifting. Other shops participating include Co-op, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Next.

Under the Pegasus scheme, these retailers will pay £800,000 over two years to fund police efforts to treat shoplifting like organised crime.

And in April, Rishi Sunak launched a fresh crackdown on serial shoplifters, with the government making assaulting a shop worker a separate criminal offence.

Many shoplifters steal to help fund a drug addiction, while others are working as part of organised gangs.

Mr Norman said: "When people are hard up, or particularly when there's a growth in other forms of crime, particularly drugs related crime, then... one way of financing it is to go and steal from shops and it's understandable, given what we've been through in the last couple of years, [that] we'd see more of that."

Self-service check-outs have been blamed in part for making shoplifting easier, given the relative lack of staff oversight.

Paul Foley, the former UK head of Aldi, said earlier this year that for self-checkouts, "the amount supermarkets are losing is much higher through them than manned tills."

Several supermarkets now make customers go through extra security measures, such as scanning a receipt before leaving the self-service area.

Mr Norman, who was a Conservative MP from 1997-2005, said that while many customers prefer not having to wait at traditional check-outs, M&S would not be going "fully-automated".

He said: "I'm a believer in service. I think that people will come to our shops have to have feel they've got that human touch.

"Now a lot of people actually don't really want to stand at a belted checkout, but they do want to feel as human beings around to help out.

"And I think some stores now [are] pretty well fully-automated, no touch robotic type of feel with security gates. I don't think that's should be the future for M&S."

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Figures released in April show that shoplifting offences in the year ending 2023 increased by 37% (to 430,104 offences) compared with the previous 12 months (315,040 offences).

That works out as roughly 1,000 shops being targeted by thieves everyday - or nearly one shop every minute.

It is the highest figure since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003.