SHOPLIFTING

HC Deb 23 March 1978 vol 946 cc1827-39

3.30 p.m.

Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch and Lymington)

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise again the question of shoplifting. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for being here and I look forward to what she has to say.

I had an opportunity as long ago as 13th June 1972 to raise the problem that I should like to discuss now. In a nutshell, my proposition is that the more supermarkets and self-service stores there are, the more shoplifting there will be, and that the methods employed by the stores provide simultaneously a joy ride for criminals and a snare for the forgetful, the weak and the confused.

There are, we know, rogues aplenty, but I should like in a few minutes of the debate to concentrate on one aspect of the shoplifting question, the role of the stores themselves. I make it clear before I start that I have no wish to condone crime, but there is a case for a rather closer study of this particular crime, a need to highlight its peculiarities, to examine its causes and to consider its remedies.

With this in mind I have joined three local magistrates in and around my constituency to form a study group. The magistrates are extremely concerned with the social effects on many people who find themselves for the first time in their lives on criminal charges. Far too often we find that people of previously impeccable character, with no criminal record, are on a serious charge. Although there are no statistics yet available of how many people on shoplifting charges are for the first time on a serious charge, the Minister will know that I and many people await such a statistic with great interest when, as it is hoped, it is produced by the Home Office.

When we announced the setting up of this study group we had a response from all over the country, not only from individuals who had suffered from the problems of finding themselves on a shoplifting charge, but we had unsolicited letters from many professional people. I shall quote from a letter that I received from the probation and after-care service in Essex. The probation officer, Mr. Lawless, wrote to me in these words: I feel rather strongly that people who are not guilty have to go through quite a considerable amount of humiliation to clear their name, and often at the end of it are not able to do that. The police themselves are only too well aware of both sides of the coin. The assistant chief constable, operations, of the Hampshire Constabulary attended one of our group meetings. He wrote to me afterwards saying Can I assure you that I do understand the concern you all feel about some shoplifting charges and the temptations which are created in some shops. It is the question of the temptations on which I should like to dwell this afternoon. I feel that magistrates are sometimes put in an impossibly difficult position in trying to deduce what was or was not in the mind of the person who comes before their bench for an offence of shoplifting. As one magistrate said to me, they are called upon to play God.

One of the problems is that people who find themselves on these charges are under enormous pressure to plead guilty because pleading not guilty can be expensive and can result in a very lengthy delay. There is also the publicity which inevitably surrounds these charges on which local newspapers up and down the country seem to thrive.

In Lymington the bench now does its best to ascertain what was in the mind of the person on a shoplifting charge. One of the questions which is frequently asked by the magistrates is "Did you intend to steal when you entered the shop?" Remarkably, some people who come before the bench pleading guilty have subsequently been acquitted when the magistrates have fully satisfied themselves on whether or not the person concerned had criminal intent.

I should like to give some statistics drawn from Written Answers from the Home Office. Ninety per cent. of those who come before magistrates' courts plead guilty. Of the 10 per cent. who plead not guilty, 52 per cent. are acquitted. Forty per cent. only of those who come before the Crown courts plead guilty, but the proportion of persons tried for the shoplifting of goods to the value of £5 or less who were acquitted at Crown courts in the years 1973, 1974 and 1975 was 44 per cent., 41 per cent. and 43 per cent. respectively.

Those are significant figures, because the charges involving £5 or less form the majority of cases. Moreover, as a percentage of shoplifting offences reported by the police for the three years I have just taken, they accounted for more than 70 per cent. of offences which came before the courts.

During the years 1969–76 inclusive, the latest for which I can get statistics from the Home Office, the average annual percentage, including—I stress this—those who pleaded guilty, who were acquitted of burglary before the Crown courts was 6.4, whereas for shoplifting the proportion was 32.5 per cent. That brings me to one of the points which I stress—that the courts are being used as a deterrent by the stores and supermarkets.

Shoplifting is statistically an exceptional crime, and some of those involved are taking exceptional steps to deal with the problem. I shall dwell for a minute or two on the activities of an organisation known as the Association for the Prevention of Thefts in Shops, established. I believe, by 30 of the largest stores and supermarket groups. This organisation seems to have substantial funds at its disposal and it is conducting what I can only call a propaganda campaign throughout the country in an effort to give people the impression that all that goes on in shoplifting is the fault of the public and has nothing to do with the stores.

This organisation appears to have cohorts of beady-eyed young ladies who scour the regional and local Press for news items with which to fuel its propaganda machine. I myself have been a target. I like to think that I represent a large number of those who have so unfortunately found themselves on a shoplifting charge and who have not had the chance to have their side of the story heard.

The director of APTS is Lady Phillips. She recently wrote a 540-word letter to the Bournemouth Echo about me and my views. She mentioned my name six times, which was very kind of her. She is a very tough lady, well able to look after herself, but she does not seem to realise that there is another side to the story, the side presented by the Sunday People on 5th February this year when, referring to people who come before the courts on shoplifting charges and speaking of the stigma involved, it picked out the story of two individuals, saying, They are just two people out of the hundreds who have faced the terrible ordeal of being wrongly accused of theft from shops. And it could happen to you. I see now that the APTS is reported in the Evening Standard this week to be making some very unusual proposals at its annual meeting in London.

Theft from shops", says Lady Phillips, add 2 per cent. to the cost of all retail sales. I am sure that that may well be so, but the House ought to ask itself why. My views about methods of trading are not dissimilar from the views which, presumably, encouraged the Home Office some years ago to ensure that prostitutes were removed from the streets. That was done in order to eliminate temptation.

Lady Phillips makes some suggestions which seem to revolve around Government activity. She says that the Government must take action. She refers to "Government action and protection", and then she asks "Why not recruit the public?" She does not say how. Are we to have vigilante squads or snoopers' brigades? Should they perhaps be armed? Is it suggested that one should cut off people's left arms?

Apparently, it is the Government's fault. It is the dishonest public's fault. Then Lady Phillips talks about the problems of education and unemployment. The problem has all manner of aspects, but, according to the APTS, it has nothing whatever to do with the trading methods of the stores. Certainly not—that would be too much to suggest—from them!

Our study group has been told by one security company that up to 70 per cent. of lossses in supermarkets are due to staff thefts. We have had contact with a number of security companies, and the lowest estimate we have had for staff theft, as opposed to shoplifting by the public, is 55 per cent.

According to the APTS propaganda, however, goods taken by the public are "shoplifting" and goods which disappear at the hands of staff are "shrinkage". That is the view of the APTS, but, as I say, it is only one side of the story.

I am determined to see that the view of the public, of many magistrates, police officers, probation officers and many lawyers is heard as well. So often, the view of the stores seems to be that anything which increases their profits is acceptable, regardless of the social consequences of their action.

Recently many stores have stopped providing receipts, and this has produced another difficulty for many people who are apprehended when leaving shops. I have seen a number of letters from Marks and Spencer apologising to people for wrongful apprehension. It would be a good thing if more people knew that they have the right to sue stores for wrongful arrest. If they sued them, perhaps the stores would take a great deal more care about not only their trading methods but the way in which they deal with people whom they suspect of having taken goods without paying for them.

What is the end product? What is it that the stores and supermarkets, particularly food supermarkets, are trying to achieve? They hint that food in supermarkets is cheaper. On 13th February I asked the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection: what information he has on the relative overall cost of food at self-service stores and at traditional stores. The answer was: There is no systematic statistical information on this subject."—[Official Report, 13th February, 1978; Vol. 944, c. 55.] Therefore, the story put out by the supermarkets that these things are done in the interests of the consumer are hard to prove statistically.

There is a world of difference between what happens in Oxford Street, London, and what happens in the supermarkets of our towns and villages. Many of the stores in Oxford Street seem to assume that all their customers are dishonest, but in the countryside, in the towns, cities and villages, there still remains a much better relationship between the public and the stores. Yet the attitude of many of the large supermarket groups is constantly damaging this personal relationship.

If one is unfortunate enough to find oneself on a shoplifting charge in London one needs a steady nerve if one chooses trial by jury, because it may take up to 18 months to reach a court. The solicitors and barristers from various parts of the country to whom our study group has spoken have told us that the waiting time for a Crown court trial outside London seems to vary betwen two and five months.

One can imagine the strain and stress experienced by people waiting to prove their innocence. This is one of the great problems. Once a person has been accused of shoplifting, he or she has to prove his or her innocence when the case comes up. The police and court staff will often advise people to plead guilty, not necessarily because they are guilty but because it is quicker, easier and cheaper for all concerned. That is wholly unsatisfactory.

Let us look briefly at the work of the store detective. How does one measure the productivity of a store detective? Presumably, the only basis is the number of people he or she can push into a court. What is a store detective? The expression is a euphemism for someone who we are led to believe has been trained. I should be grateful if the Minister would say something about the Home Office views about the training or non-training of store detectives. Some of the big stores take a responsible view. But others take a rather different view.

Another problem is the ease with which alcoholic beverages can be obtained in supermarkets. Alcoholism among housewives is a growing social problem. This is not unconnected with the fact that whereas people used to have to go into an off-licence to buy a bottle of whisky or gin, they can now walk into a supermarket and buy it with the butter.

One of the favourite methods currently used by the supermarket groups to provide evidence to the courts for shoplifting charges is the till roll, the receipt provided in food supermarkets to those who have done their shopping. What often happens is that a person will be apprehended and taken straight to the managers' office and will not see the till roll. The first time it is produced is in court. In a recent case that I attended in my constituency a man who had been 30 years in the Hampshire police force was convicted of shoplifting almost wholly on the evidence of the till roll.

Someone recently told me in my surgery of experiences he had had on recent visits to a cash-and-carry warehouse in Bournemouth. In the first instance he bought a 12 lb. block of cheese costing £6.53. On his return home he checked the till roll against his purchases and found no item for £6.53, but there was an item of 53p that he could not account for—a discrepancy of £6. On his next visit to the warehouse, my constituent kindly and honestly volunteered to pay. However, on a subsequent visit to the same warehouse he was load- ing his goods into the back of his car when he found a crate of dog food that he had not ordered or paid for, and that was not registered on the till roll. If he had been apprehended as he left the store he would have been in an almost impossible position when it came to defending himself.

I am sorry if I have given the House or the Minister the impression that my only concern is with the innocent, or trading methods. Of course, shoplifting is a major social problem and I should not like the Minister to get the impression that I am in any way attempting to condone crime. What I want is to see the implementation of the methods of prevention that were recommended in the Home Office working party report, to whose work I referred in the Adjournment debate in 1972. Very few of those recommendations concerning preventive methods in the stores have been implemented, because the supermarkets say that if any one of them did so, it would put it at a competitive disadvantage. This seems to point to the necessity of taking steps to ensure that they are all required to adopt preventive methods.

I close by making some recommendations to the Minister. I should like to see all stores bringing their own prosecutions. More than anything else, this would ensure that they took a more socially responsible attitude towards shoplifting and the social costs involved than they take at present. I should like to see the staff of stores uniformed, so that the public can regard the staff as a deterrent as well as a means of assistance. There should be large warning notices about the dangers of leaving a store without paying for goods.

There should also be the provision of bag parks so that everyone who enters a supermarket is required to leave his shopping bag or handbag in the bag park before he does his shopping. This is done in a number of big stores and supermarkets and has dramatically reduced shoplifting.

Perhaps the magistrates should be given an additional role. Magistrates are required to license premises selling alcoholic goods. Perhaps some system might be introduced to give magistrates the power to license premises as self-service premises. If the Home Office were to lay down a code of practice and the magistrates were to do no more and no less with self-service stores than they do with places selling alcoholic beverages that could be of considerable assistance in preventing shoplifting. It is a major problem.

The statistics give the costs but they cannot show the hidden misery which even includes the occasional suicide by people who find themselves on shoplifting charges. My proposals would make life harder for the criminal and safer for the public.

3.47 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summerskill)

The hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) has pursued this subject with great dedication over the years. I have taken careful note of the points and the suggestions that he has made.

In spite of the discussion that has taken place in this House, it is still extremely difficult to judge the extent of shoplifting. In 1972 in England and Wales there were about 127,000 shoplifting offences known to the police. This had risen to about 181,000 in 1976. During the same period the number of persons found guilty or cautioned for this offence rose from 73,000 to 109,000. Regrettable though these increases are, they are, of course, but one part of the general increase in recorded crime over the period.

Shoplifting is a crime which tends not to be reported to the police unless a person is caught in the act, and even then it is not always reported. But if every detected case of shoplifting were reported to the police, this would still not reveal the full extent of the problem, because the amount of undetected shoplifting is an unknown quantity. There is the added difficulty of distinguishing between shoplifting by customers and thefts by shop staff which the hon. Member mentioned, The total cost of all such losses is commonly reckoned to be about 2 per cent. of turnover. Put another way, this means that every year the housewife has to pay out the equivalent of an extra week's shopping to cover theft. Clearly, offences on that scale must be a matter of concern, and it is right that everything possible should be done to prevent them.

It is generally accepted that self-service shopping has increased the opportunities for shoplifters as well as offering new hazards for the absent-minded. However, the development of large, open-display supermarkets seems to be generally welcome to the shopping public, as well as to those who run them.

Shoplifting is not, of course, merely a problem of dishonesty, and I accept that there are those who are sick, under stress, or genuinely absent-minded and make mistakes. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to decide when there has been a genuine mistake, because a suspect will often claim that he put the goods in his shopping basket inadvertently, even though there was a deliberate intention to steal. I am aware of the concern that innocent shoppers can be wrongfully accused—and, indeed, convicted—of shoplifting, although I am bound to say that I have no evidence that innocent people are convicted of shoplifting any more than I have any evidence that innocent people are convicted of other offences.

The law already provides the basis for distinguished between the shoplifter and the absent-minded shopper, in so far as this is humanly possible. As with any other form of theft, an essential ingredient of the offence is dishonesty, and a court cannot convict unless, having heard the evidence from both sides, it is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that there was dishonest intent. Where relevant, the mental state of the offender is taken into account. I doubt whether the law can go further than this in protecting the innocent without allowing the guilty to escape justice, and it is right that these matters should be settled in a court of law. But a lot of safeguards can be taken to prevent shoplifting and minimise the risk to innocent shoppers.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Home Office's working party on internal shop security, which made several recommendations. Store detectives enjoy no rights in law additional to those enjoyed by the ordinary citizen. Any use of unlawful methods would be a matter for the courts. The Government have not so far been persuaded of the need for some form of control, registration or licensing of store detectives, but they are prepared to consider any evidence of such a need.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of sentencing policy. The sentence to be passed in any case of shoplifting is, of course, within the discretion of the court concerned. Maximum penalties give the courts plenty of scope. Besides the usual range of non-custodial penalties, magistrates' courts have available a sentence of six months' imprisonment and the Crown court 10 years'. The Criminal Law Act 1977 will increase the maximum summary fine for theft to £1,000 when the relevant sections come into force.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of acquittal rates. The proportion of people who plead not guilty to shoplifting and are acquitted is about the same in magistrates' courts as in the Crown court, and when compared with the convictions for burglary and theft the acquittal rates for shoplifting are not very different in proportion. The acquittal rate in contested cases for all indictable offences tried in the magistrates' courts was 55 per cent. and for all offences tried on indictment in Crown court 47 per cent.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has received the hon. Gentleman's letter about till rolls, and the hon. Gentleman will be receiving a considered reply. My right hon. Friend found his letter extremely interesting.

I think that it would be fair to say that the police and shop managements would generally be reluctant to prosecute unless there were strong evidence that an offence had been committed. Shop managements in particular would wish to have regard to the time and expense involved in preparing a prosecution. Usually, a person is apprehended only after he has been seen to take an article, retain it and leave the shop without paying for it.

I now turn to the question of prevention, since I am sure we should agree that many of the difficulties which we have been discussing would be avoided if more shoplifting could be prevented. The working party on internal shop security made a number of recommendations in this area. Almost all the recommendations were addressed to retailers, and there were no recommendations for legislation or Government action. Legislation to require retailers to modify their selling methods or to make constructional alterations to their shops—for example to provide shopping bag parks, to which matter I shall return in a moment—would be a considerable innovation, requiring strong justification. There are limits to what the law should do to protect shoppers or others from themselves and I think we must see how much can be achieved through discussion and agreement before saying that changes in the criminal law are desirable.

Returning to the question of the provision of parking areas for shopping bags, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that this is a matter which has already been considered in some detail by the Home Office standing committee on crime prevention. The idea undoubtedly has its attractions, but there are difficulties—not only for the retailers. It would be expensive in terms of staff and space it might cause congestion at check-out points and it could result in theft from customers' bags. Nevertheless, the Home Office approached seven of the largest food supermarkets in the country on the subject. They considered the suggestion but rejected it because they doubted whether it would be cost-effective and acceptable to their customers.

Mr. Adley

Will the Minister please contact the Carrefour hypermarket at Eastleigh and Wilkos in Bournemouth and get from them the results and the cost-effectiveness of the system that they have operated?

Dr. Summerskill

I shall certainly do so. But that still does not answer my point. We asked seven large supermarkets to provide parking areas for shopping bags but they decided against it. We must continually try to persuade the retailer to accept such a proposal. Even though it may be difficult, we must persuade the retailers of the arguments.

The Government will continue to do what they can to encourage measures to prevent shoplifting. It is relevant that the Association for the Prevention of Theft in Shops—which the hon. Gentleman mentioned at some length—was formed last year, which shows the public and retail interest in this whole matter. At least efforts are being made in the direction of improving our knowledge and understanding of the problem, and this increases the opportunities for discussing possible solutions. I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's study group and I shall be glad to receive a report of any proposals which it might make.

Finally, I stress that the report by the Home Office working party entitled "Shoplifting and Theft by Shop Staff" contains a wealth of useful information in spite of the fact that it was published in 1973. It is still worth reading and it received wide and favourable publicity when it came out. I hope that this debate today, as well as serving to commend that report to retailers, will draw to the attention of retailers the methods preventing shoplifting which, I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree, is the main part of his battle.