David Hanson: Thank you, Mr Speaker—and congratulations. As a Labour member of the ISC, I support the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the Chair of the Committee, and share his concerns. The security services have cleared our report, the Cabinet Office has cleared our report, and we have made recommendations to the Prime Minister. Since receiving the report, has the Prime...
David Hanson: I am grateful to you, Mr Betts, for chairing this session, and to the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for their responses. I will take one point from what the Minister said: if he is returned, he has agreed to review the £200 threshold on shop theft, which I know my hon. Friend will do, should she be returned to office. This issue is extremely...
David Hanson: Before the Minister moves on, is it his gut instinct that, if he were returned, as opposed to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), he would legislate for a stronger legislative solution to the offence?
David Hanson: I beg to move, That this House has considered prevention of retail crime. Welcome to the Chair, Mr Betts, for the final day of activity in this Parliament. I wanted to raise the issue of retail crime today because it is still an important one that the House needs to consider. I shall discuss a number of matters that I hope will give the Minister food for thought but also provoke responses on...
David Hanson: My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. I am starting with the financial cost of crime, but I will come in a moment to the key issue, of which the Minister will be aware, of the consultation regarding attacks on shop staff.
David Hanson: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I had not intended to refer to it in this debate, but self-evidently, in a big shopping area such as the Trafford Centre, policing and security for shoppers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas, is a critical issue, and my hon. Friend is right to raise it today. As I said, £700 million has been lost because of customer theft...
David Hanson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Everybody who runs a shop wants their staff to be protected. Large multinational retailers such as Tesco, the Co-op, Sainsbury’s and Asda are caring for their staff, but everybody who runs a shop, be it a corner shop, a one-person shop, or another kind of small shop, wants their staff to be protected at work. That is particularly important when those...
David Hanson: My hon. Friend has put an important issue on the table for the Minister to respond to. In June, 50 senior retail figures, chief executives of the UK’s most recognisable retailers, the general secretary of USDAW, the chief executive of the Charity Retail Association and the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium all signed a letter calling for legislation in response to the...
David Hanson: I absolutely agree, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s efforts in this area. It is right that the Government should do that. I am looking to the Minister to show political leadership on this. For example, 98% of the current police and crime commissioners’ policing plans make no reference to shop theft, 63% make no reference to business crime, 72% make no reference to prolific offending...
David Hanson: That is another knock-on consequence of retail crime and emphasises the point I want to make to the Minister. This is not an inconsequential or victim-free crime. The victims of shop theft and shop retail crime are the staff on the frontline, who are upholding the law, the shop owners and businesses, who take a hit to their profits, the customers, who pay more, and the insurance companies and...
David Hanson: I am not a Front Bencher. My Front-Bench days are over by choice. I did the Minister’s job at one point. We had 21,000 more police officers, at that stage, who helped to protect victims from crime. I cannot speak for a future Labour Government, but I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East and for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) and my right hon. Friend the Member for...
David Hanson: They are, and as the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) said earlier, the additional costs of CCTV, head cameras, recording equipment or protective measures such as shutters fall disproportionately on smaller shops. When I was doing the Minister’s job, we had a scheme to support small businesses to prevent shop theft and other types of theft. I would like to hear what he proposes to do,...
David Hanson: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether any research has been conducted on the number of home visits being proactively offered to vulnerable claimants of universal credit.
David Hanson: Because of the impending general election, Committee proceedings have changed today.
David Hanson: I add that the Scrutiny Unit has also done a good job in preparing a range of detailed information. None of the work that has been done in preparation for this Bill will be lost, because, as the Minister said, it will be revisited. We will see which Members are on a Committee in due course. I wish everybody every success for the future.
David Hanson: The Committee must now agree a special report to be made to the House.
David Hanson: Good afternoon, Emily and Jo, and thank you for your attendance at the Committee this afternoon. For the purposes of the record, could you introduce yourselves, starting with Emily?
David Hanson: We are grateful for your attendance today.
David Hanson: Q Are there any further Members who wish to ask questions of the witnesses? If not, is there anything you wish to add that the Committee has not covered?