SHOPS ACT 1950 (AMENDMENT) (Hansard, 8 May 1967)

§ Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Shops Act 1950 to impose upon self-service stores an obligation to provide adequate supervision of their sales service as a protection for the general public against unwarranted allegations of larceny. I confess that I had a certain trepidation in bringing a Bill of this kind before the House in case I should be accused of supporting the inveterate shop-lifter. This M.P., like others, wishes to be on the side of the angels. None of us is an angel, and it would be humbug to suggest that any of us are not subject to be led into temptation of one sort or another, not necessarily in connection with shops. Society and its institutions and its organisations should aim to limit putting temptation in the way of people just as strongly as it seeks to deal with the law-breaker.

The Chairman of the Supermarket Association of Great Britain, hearing about my Bill, says that it is ludicrous; but he has not seen it. He should see my mail. I have received more on this than on the Live Hare Coursing (Abolition) Bill and, as I come from the hunting county of Rutland, that is saying something.

The Bill seeks three things: first, adequate supervision in self-service stores; secondly, following from that, to put restraint on the right of supermarket managers to question customers in private without limit and without cautioning them; thirdly, to safeguard the forgetful, the flustered and the innocent from finding themselves in a magistrates' court.

A short time ago I went to my local shop in London—Mr. Andrews, at Northwood, Middlesex—for my usual 966 newspapers and tobacco. I was travelling in my car that morning, and I picked up a packet of mints from the counter to suck on my journey. It was not until I got into the car that I realised that I had paid for my normal morning purchases but not for the mints. I was known in the shop and the matter became a joke. I paid the next time I went in. But if it had been a supermarket where I was not known there would have been no next time. It might have been no joke and a career and reputation, however unpromising, could have crashed to the ground. It did not happen to me, but it does happen to other people.

My mail tells me many stories. There was the case of a widow who has never been in trouble with the police before, who is responsible for two young children, who will appear in court in a week or two and is nearly distracted. Would not a warning to that lady have been adequate and more kindly? There was the case of the charging of a blind woman. Public figures are charged—the supermarkets love public figures and seek the maximum of publicity on them.

There was an old lady of 91 who was remanded in Holloway Goal. A woman has written to me whose small child, following her round a supermarket, picked up a packet of crisps and put it in mummy's basket. Mummy did not know and mummy was therefore then in trouble. There was a woman who was kept for nearly an hour separated from her six-year-old son while she was interrogated in the manager's office and was subsequently found not guilty. Women have been walked through the streets by the police at the behest of managers of these stores, many of which have hardly any assistants available to help their customers. The assistance has been getting less and less, yet the stores employ detectives to move around catching the foolish, the mistaken, or even the innocent housewife. But these detectives seem singularly inept at catching the hardened professional. Some stores have one-way mirrors to spy for the light-fingered and sometimes to catch the careless; there are the peepholes through the doors. Would it not be better if instead of this rather un-British means of seeking out people whom the stores want to catch more open supervision were introduced?

967 Many of these stories are maximising profits by minimising the service they offer and by tempting the public. Self-service or supermarket stores by their nature must mean cuts in staff, and I accept this. But that does not mean that they should be practically without staff or supervision. If they want this set-up they should at least discriminate in the prosecutions they take out.

I believe that it would be right for the self-service stores themselves to introduce safeguards. I do not want Bills to deal with them if I can help it. They should introduce such safeguards as the following. First, where they suspect a person they should take the name and address quietly. If all the stores took names and addresses in this way, they would soon find out—because they would have a list—the difference between the foxes who steal and the careless rather than the cunning animal. If a person had no previous record of her name having been taken in this or any other shop, a letter of warning would suffice.

Secondly, they should consider introducing some form of cloakroom bay for leaving the housewife's own shopping bag. One does not have to be a criminal to put things in the wrong basket. Thirdly, they should see that goods are stamped with the name of the shop. It is possible to go from one supermarket to another and be charged with taking from the second shop what one has bought at the first. Either the shops should do this or else they have a clear option to wrap up the goods that the customer purchases.

Fourthly—and this is very important—store managers should stop interrogating without caution. There is a serious loop-hole here in the law. The judge's rules say that a policeman must caution, and this also applies to anyone acting as a private investigator. Yet this rule does not apply to a store manager. Why should it not do so? Why should a frightened women be subjected to interrogation? We do not want private courts of inquiry among the groceries. We have got them.

If any of these suggestions are said to be impractical by the superstores, let us have some alternatives. Certainly not all my suggestions are impractical. Among my mail last week, which was 968 substantial, I received a copy of the Small Shopkeeper. This was sent to me in an attempt to prove that I was wrong in putting forward the Bill, but it only further convinced me that I was right to do so.

At the bottom of the first page of this two-page magazine there is a short article with the heading "Shoplifting—the bill" and it goes on: The fantastic bill for temptation and greed. The article then gives the figure of £100 million a year out of £11,000 million of sales as being lost in shoplifting—about 1 per cent. But in fact the figure is phoney. As the article indicates further down, the figure of £100 million also includes what is called "shrinkage". Shrinkage includes things other than shoplifting, including pilfering by the staffs of the firms concerned.

The Supermarket Association says that shoplifting must be stopped in the interests of the public, but the Small Shop-keeper says: One huge chain of general stores is said actually to calculate on losing 2 per cent—reckoning that the display which creates temptation is worth it. One is not sure whether the Association wants shoplifting to go on in their own interests or whether it wants it to stop in the public interest.

I ask leave for the Bill hoping that the House will accept it. I want to say to the Supermarket Association that if, as it suggests, it does not want its stores to become fortresses, it should keep its cannons for the inveterate shop-lifter and not for the careless or even the innocent.

§ Mr. Peter Doig (Dundee, West)

I wish to oppose the granting of leave to bring in this Bill. I am convinced that it would serve no useful purpose. The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) suggests that it is necessary to have adequate supervision in the stores and it would be interesting to know what he means by that. Obviously, it would mean considerable extra staff, and that would mean increases in the cost of the goods to the customers.

Indeed, the hon. Gentleman's argument is an argument against self-service stores and supermarkets, but the public like these stores and in any case one can 969 never completely remove temptation from everyone, although that is what the hon. Gentleman appears to want to do. Supposing one did remove open counters from supermarkets? How many other stores are there throughout the country which have open counters? There are thousands of them. Obviously, a Bill of this kind would serve no useful purpose whatever. It would substantially increase costs and the customer would have to pay more.

The hon. Gentleman's suggestion that it is wrong to take people in and question them really eliminates the very point he is making. The object of questioning is to find out whether the taking of goods has been accidental or intentional. The hon. Gentleman should remember that a person is questioned only after someone has seen her lifting goods that she has not paid for. She is questioned in order to find out whether it was accidental or intentional.

I have been in court when this type of person has appeared. Very often, persons have been followed right round the store and have been seen to lift as many as 20 articles—and one does not lift 20 articles through carelessness. The whole purpose of taking a person to the manager's office is to avoid any unnecessary prosecution for the accidental or careless placing of goods other than in the wire basket provided.

The hon. Gentleman may have some case for suggesting cautioning, but let us 970 be clear. Under our present system, the only caution by the police is delivered when they have decided to charge a person. They very often question people without cautioning them. It is only when they reach the point of having decided to charge the person that they issue the caution that he need not say anything but that anything he says will be taken down and used in evidence against him.

I am convinced that we are getting too many Bills of this kind going through the House, holding up its proper procedures. We certainly should not let this Bill go any further, because it will serve no useful purpose.