00:00Well, just to sort of put things in sort of context, we're talking about 55,000 sort of
00:07shoplifting offences a day. Now, obviously, that's an average, but that's a phenomenal
00:11number on the high street, and also sort of the rise in sort of abuse incidents where
00:15sort of staff, whether they be sort of behind the counter or the security guards, are assaulted
00:20in sort of carrying out sort of the, you know, serving people. Now, the difficulty is that
00:24sort of what's the causes? Well, there's a whole range of issues. You know, of course,
00:28people are sort of getting poorer, but I don't think it stands that entirely. So some people
00:33maybe don't have desperation, but of course, what we're also seeing is the rise of sort of
00:37gangs doing this. Shoplifting incidents in 2024 reportedly cost retailers £2.2bn. This figure
00:44is up £1.8bn on the previous year. In fact, an industry body has said that retail crime is out
00:50of control in the UK, with shoplifters carrying out violent acts of theft due to not favouring
00:55consequences. I think there is a sense that sort of shoplifting now, it's kind of, well,
01:01firstly, maybe victimless, but it's not, because of course, it's the shopkeepers or the sort of
01:05the company that owns it. But more particularly, of course, it's the sort of the fact that police
01:09seem to have less power in terms of both arresting these people and putting them in jail because,
01:13of course, they clearly believe that's not going to happen. The most important thing we've got to
01:19recognise, we're standing in a high street here, but of course, it's not the main street,
01:22and we sort of go down every high street and you see sort of premises being vacated,
01:26and sort of hearings of the double A Smiths are going to disappear from the high street,
01:30and many other names have sort of gone previously. And it's really difficult to be a high street
01:35trader with all the tenant costs in terms of the pound rates and whatever else that they've got to
01:40pay and stuff. And so their marginal sort of the amount that they make in terms of profit is pretty
01:47limited. Therefore, anything that sort of undermines that is going to sort of put them
01:51into a loss-making situation. So it's a crisis, and we need to do something about it.
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