Suella Braverman must stop the shoplifters, says RUTH SUNDERLAND

When Ken Murphy, the boss of Britain’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, spoke out last month against the wave of shoplifting and violence against store workers, he raised a blue touchpaper.

He has rendered valuable public service. Until he highlighted it in our sister paper The Mail on Sunday, which has launched an anti-shoplifting campaign, the epidemic of theft and violence in shops was not being taken seriously enough.

With a few honorable exceptions, including the Co-op, other store bosses have been reluctant to speak out about the scourge, probably for fear of scaring off customers.

The silence was part of the problem because it allowed ministers and police chiefs to ignore it. But when Tesco’s CEO speaks, the game changes: everyone has to listen.

His intervention has ensured that retail crime is at the top of the news agenda everywhere. With all due respect to Russell Brand, it’s hard to think of a subject that has struck such a chord. Murphy and the CEOs of 80 other stores are calling for a meeting with Interior Minister Suella Braverman this week to present her with their demands for changes in the law and tougher policing.

A strong stance on shoplifting would win votes for the Conservatives.

The current climate of cynicism and impunity, in which most violations go unpunished, is an insult to many voters. At the heart of this is the misconception that shoplifting is a petty or victimless crime, apparently shared by singer Robbie Williams, who made ill-considered jokes on social media.

It makes you wonder how his fans who work in retail enjoyed that.

Shoplifting is not trivial. It is rising at a time when reported crime is falling overall: there were more than 342,000 cases in the year to March, an increase of almost 25 per cent on the previous year. These figures are almost certainly underestimated.

As the number of crimes increases, prosecutions decrease. Just over 21,000 people in England and Wales were prosecuted for shoplifting in the year to June 2022 – around a quarter of the number a decade ago.

On their own, many cases of retail crime do not cause major losses or serious damage, but the cumulative effect is enormous.

Retailers lost almost £1 billion to shoplifting in the year to April 2022 and spent more than £700 million on crime prevention. Even more important is the physical and psychological damage to store staff and customers who are victims of abuse or violent incidents.

Communities will be devastated as shops are forced to close their shutters due to persistent theft and attacks.

Closures are already taking place in the US, where discount chain Target announced last week that it is closing stores.

What can be done? Attacks on store staff should be classified as a specific offense. Combined with exemplary punishment, that would be a powerful message.

The police are overstretched, but retailers complain bitterly about the inadequate response. That has to improve.

There are other measures in place, including in-store surveillance and helping stores identify and ban the worst offenders.

One idea is a ‘Most Wanted’ rogues gallery, which retailers can gain access to online through police. There are pitfalls, but a thief’s right to privacy should not outweigh the right of others to work and shop safely.

Our shopping streets have been plagued by a series of setbacks. The last thing it needs is an uncontrolled crime wave.