Cooper’s pledge to curb epidemic of shoplifting
LABOUR has pledged to crack down on shoplifters and change the law to protect retail workers in a bid to ‘rebuild security’ on the country’s streets.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said thefts under £200 are not investigated – even if the perpetrators are repeat offenders.
In an attempt to curb the epidemic of shoplifting and violence against workers, she vowed to end the £200 rule to tackle shoplifting gangs.
She told the Labour conference her party would bring in a law and tougher sentences for attacks on shopworkers – a key demand of The Mail on Sunday’s campaign to end the shoplifting epidemic.
Ms Cooper said: ‘We will rebuild security on our streets. Our town centres should be the beating heart of our communities. Instead, we’ve got local shops chaining fabric conditioner to shelves, putting security tags on packs of cheese and butter to fend off organised gang raids.
‘An epidemic of shoplifting and violence against shop workers.’
She said a Labour government would bring in Respect Orders to ban repeat offenders from town centres. ‘We’ll restore neighbourhood policing – 13,000 more police and PCSOs back on our streets and patrols in the heart of our towns.’
Labour would amend the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to scrap the category of low-value shoplifting, which it believes has led to shoplifting under £200 going unpunished.
Ms Cooper pledged to set up 90 youth hubs to give teenagers the ‘best start in life’ and to stop the knife crime that is ‘killing our children’. In a deliberate echo of Tony Blair’s 1993 conference speech, she said: ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. We said it, we mean it, that means we have to act.’
‘An epidemic of violence’