Lord Davies of Gower:

Moved by Lord Davies of Gower

215: After Clause 39, insert the following new Clause—“Requirements in certain sentences imposed for third or subsequent shoplifting offence(1) The Sentencing Code is amended as follows.(2) In section 208 (community order: exercise of power to impose particular requirements), in subsections (3) and (6) after “subsection (10)” insert “and sections 208A”.(3) After that section insert—“208A Community order: requirements for third or subsequent shoplifting offence(1) This section applies where—(a) a person is convicted of adult shoplifting (“the index offence”), (b) when the index offence was committed, the offender had on at least two previous occasions been sentenced in respect of adult shoplifting or an equivalent Scottish or Northern Ireland offence, and(c) the court makes a community order in respect of the index offence.(2) The community order must, subject to subsection (3), include at least one of the following requirements—(a) a curfew requirement;(b) an exclusion requirement;(c) an electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement.(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if—(a) the court is of the opinion that there are exceptional circumstances which—(i) relate to any of the offences or the offender, and(ii) justify the court not including any requirement of a kind mentioned in subsection (2), or(b) neither of the following requirements could be included in the order—(i) an electronic compliance monitoring requirement for securing compliance with a proposed curfew requirement or proposed exclusion requirement;(ii) an electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement.(4) In subsection (1)(b), the reference to an occasion on which an offender was sentenced in respect of adult shoplifting does not include an occasion if—(a) each conviction for adult shoplifting for which the offender was dealt with on that occasion has been quashed, or(b) the offender was re-sentenced for adult shoplifting (and was not otherwise dealt with for adult shoplifting) on that occasion.(5) In this section—“adult shoplifting” means an offence under section 1 of the Theft Act 1968 committed by a person aged 18 or over in circumstances where—(a) the stolen goods were being offered for sale in a shop or any other premises, stall, vehicle or place from which a trade or business was carried on, and(b) at the time of the offence, the offender was, or was purporting to be, a customer or potential customer of the person offering the goods for sale;“equivalent Scottish or Northern Ireland offence” means—(a) in Scotland, theft committed by a person aged 18 or over in the circumstances mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b) of the definition of “adult shoplifting”, or(b) in Northern Ireland, an offence under section 1 of the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 committed by a person aged 18 or over in those circumstances.(6) Nothing in subsection (2) enables a requirement to be included in a community order if it could not otherwise be so included.(7) Where—(a) in a case to which this section applies, a court makes a community order which includes a requirement of a kind mentioned in subsection (2),(b) a previous conviction of the offender is subsequently set aside on appeal, and(c) without the previous conviction this section would not have applied, notice of appeal against the sentence may be given at any time within 28 days from the day on which the previous conviction was set aside (despite anything in section 18 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968).”.(4) After section 292 insert— “292A Suspended sentence order: community requirements for third or subsequent shoplifting offence(1) This section applies where—(a) a person is convicted of adult shoplifting (“the index offence”),(b) when the index offence was committed, the offender had on at least two previous occasions been sentenced in respect of adult shoplifting or an equivalent Scottish or Northern Ireland offence, and(c) the court makes a suspended sentence order in respect of the index offence.(2) The suspended sentence order must, subject to subsection (3), impose at least one of the following requirements—(a) a curfew requirement;(b) an exclusion requirement;(c) an electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement.(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if—(a) the court is of the opinion that there are exceptional circumstances which—(i) relate to any of the offences or the offender, and(ii) justify the court not imposing on the offender any requirement of a kind mentioned in subsection (2), or(b) neither of the following requirements could be imposed on the offender—(i) an electronic compliance monitoring requirement for securing compliance with a proposed curfew requirement or proposed exclusion requirement;(ii) an electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement.(4) Section 208A(4) (occasions to be disregarded) applies for the purposes of subsection (1)(b).(5) In this section “adult shoplifting” and “equivalent Scottish or Northern Ireland offence” have the meaning given by section 208A.(6) Nothing in subsection (2) enables a requirement to be imposed by a suspended sentence order if it could not otherwise be so imposed.(7) Where—(a) in a case to which this section applies, a court makes a suspended sentence order which imposes a requirement of a kind mentioned in subsection (2),(b) a previous conviction of the offender is subsequently set aside on appeal, and(c) without the previous conviction this section would not have applied,notice of appeal against the sentence may be given at any time within 28 days from the day on which the previous conviction was set aside (despite anything in section 18 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968).”.”Member’s explanatory statementThis new clause imposes a duty (subject to certain exceptions) to impose a curfew requirement, an exclusion requirement or an electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement on certain persons convicted of shoplifting, where the offender is given a community sentence or suspended sentence order.

My Lords, Amendment 215 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie speaks to a growing and deeply felt concern shared by communities and retailers across the country—that the persistent and habitual shoplifter is too often left to reoffend, with little Intervention, limited consequences and insufficient support to break the cycle of offending. There has been a 13% increase in shoplifting offences in the year ending June 2025.

Shoplifting is not a victimless crime. It affects small family businesses and major retailers alike. It drives up costs, erodes public confidence and contributes to the sense of disorder on our high streets. The British Retail Consortium estimates millions of pounds in losses each year, with many retailers reporting that the same individuals commit offence after offence. Yet, as things stand, even repeat offenders may receive community disposals that lack the structure, monitoring or restrictions necessary either to protect the public or to encourage rehabilitation.

This amendment seeks not to remove judicial discretion —indeed, I shall return to that point in a moment—but to ensure that, where an adult offender has already been sentenced twice for shoplifting, a third or subsequent conviction resulting in a community order or a suspended sentence order should, as a norm, carry a meaningful and enforceable requirement. The new Clause we propose would therefore require courts, save in exceptional circumstances, to impose at least one of three measures: a curfew requirement, an exclusion requirement, or electronic whereabouts monitoring. Each of these is already well established within the Sentencing Code. This amendment does not invent new powers but would ensure that they are applied where they are most needed.

Persistent offending demands a persistent response. A curfew can provide stability and reduce opportunities for offending. An exclusion order can prevent an offender returning to the very location where they have repeatedly caused harm. Electronic monitoring can give both authorities and the community greater reassurance that restrictions are being observed. Crucially, judicial discretion is preserved. If there are exceptional circumstances relating to the offence or to the offender that make such a requirement inappropriate, the court may depart from the presumption. Likewise, where electronic monitoring cannot lawfully or practically be imposed, the requirement falls away. The amendment is therefore both firm and flexible. It sets a clear expectation without creating an inflexible straitjacket.

This amendment also carefully defines adult shoplifting and ensures consistency across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It contains proper safeguards; for example, by providing for cases in which previous convictions were later quashed and ensuring that appeals remain possible in such circumstances. What we propose is modest, proportionate and targeted. It will help retailers, support communities and provide offenders with structure—often the very thing that is lacking in the lives of those who fall into serial offending.

The Government’s rhetoric must be met with practical measures. This amendment offers one such measure. It would not overload the courts. It would simply ensure that, where an offender has persistently exploited the leniency of the system, the system responds with firmness, clarity and consequence. I hope the Minister will look favourably on this amendment. It would strengthen public protection, reinforce judicial tools already at the court’s disposal and send a clear message that persistent shop theft will not be tolerated. I beg to move.

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 216 in my name. I look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s response to the proposal from my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower for tougher community treatment of repeat offenders. As it is focused on the community and on suspended sentence orders, it seems to fit in very well with the spirit of the Sentencing Bill, which we will no doubt be debating on a number of further days.

As the Minister the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, has already acknowledged, and as the recent Crime Survey shows, shoplifting has risen very significantly in recent years, especially since Covid. Indeed, we heard on the “Today” programme this morning that the average number of days it takes to deal with shoplifting cases has increased by 80% in the last decade.

My own experience has taught me something else: the biggest problem with shoplifting is not so much the law as the patchy and sometimes non-existent nature of police enforcement in relation to shoplifting and associated misdemeanours. The general acceptance that thefts worth less than £200—the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, was the first to mention that minimum—do not matter to the authorities is a particular bugbear of mine and of others who care about decency and limiting neighbourhood crime and its distressing effects.

That issue lies behind my Amendment 216, which would reverse that deplorable trend. My amendment would require the College of Policing to issue a code of practice to ensure that police forces also investigate shoplifting where the value of goods is less than £200. Letting people walk into shops, steal things and get away scot free eats at the heart of a civilised society, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, explained earlier. You only need to visit San Francisco in recent years to see the awful effects on its once golden streets. However, there is hope there: a Democratic mayor is at last seeing good sense. I hope the Government will follow that lead and consider my amendment this evening.

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s Amendment 215, I have great sympathy for its suggestions. Electronic monitoring can certainly play a useful role, although there is mixed evidence of its ability to reduce reoffending. However, there are multiple challenges in implementation, including inconsistent use by probation services, delays in procuring new GPS tags and gaps in responding promptly to breaches. However, my main problem is that, from a policing perspective, I worry there is no slack available in police time to monitor curfews, exclusion orders or electronic tagging. I fear it may be counterproductive to give the police yet more work when they are having great difficulty coping with what they already have.

I have a similar reservation about Amendment 216, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. In principle, I would support a code of practice to improve enforcement. However, in the absence of more police resources, the danger is that this would only exacerbate the current situation, where chief constables are faced with having to rob Peter to pay Paul in other areas of policing, and victims of other crimes would likely suffer as a consequence.

I would stress prevention over cure. I draw the Committee’s and the Minister’s attention to a West Midlands Police programme that diverts repeat low-level shoplifters into services like drug rehabilitation. Since its pilot in 2018, it has been credited with saving local businesses an estimated £2.3 million through reduced shoplifting. Surely this is something we ought at least to investigate.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for tabling Amendments 215 and 216 respectively. I have great respect for both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. The noble Baroness’s background means that she knows more than most about the corrosive experience of shoplifting and the effect it can have on those working in the retail industry. The noble Lord’s distinguished career as a police officer gives him great authority to speak about the challenges to police forces and their obligations to society that they should be fulfilling. I reassure both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that we are all on the same side on this. This is one of these situations where I am very keen to work with Members from all sides of your Lordships’ Committee to ensure that we deal with this social and economic menace efficiently and effectively.

On Amendment 215, I will repeat what I said a few moments ago: this Government take repeat and prolific offending extremely seriously. However, sentencing in individual cases must be a matter for our independent judiciary, and it must take into account all the circumstances of the offence and the offender, as well as the statutory purposes of sentencing. Your Lordships will, of course, be aware that the courts have a broad range of sentencing powers to deal effectively and appropriately with offenders.

As some of your Lordships may be aware, until relatively recently I was a judge in the Crown Court, and I sentenced my fair share of shoplifters. There was a complete spectrum of those offenders, from the destitute, homeless young mother stealing nappies for her baby at one end to the shameless, organised shoplifting gangs who terrify and terrorise shop workers. As the sentencing judge, there was a toolbox of disposals of increasing seriousness available to me, so that I could match the appropriate sentence to the offender on a case-by-case basis. These included discharges, fines, community sentences, suspended sentences with requirements and custodial sentences where appropriate.

Previous convictions are already a statutory aggravating factor, with the sentencing guidelines making it clear that, when determining the sentence, sentencers must consider the nature and relevance of previous convictions and the time elapsed since the previous conviction. But that repeats what is, in fact, common sense and what every sentencer knows. From my own experience, I can tell the Committee that the more frequently a defendant appears before the court, having gone out and done exactly the same thing that he or she had just been sentenced for, the more exasperated the judge becomes, who then starts imposing tougher and tougher sentences.

Despite the popular caricatures, judges do live in the real world. While sentencing a shoplifter to prison as a standard proposition will seem harsh, it can and does happen if the court concludes that there is no other way of stopping them. Importantly, this Government will introduce a whole range of options that will ramp up the community and suspended sentence powers for judges. In other words, the toolbox is getting fancier and more extensive.

As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has said, sentencers are already able to impose a robust range of electronic monitoring requirements on anyone serving their sentence in the community. Where the court imposes curfews, exclusion zones and/or an alcohol ban, offenders must be electronically monitored, subject to individual suitability. I note the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, about the effect on police resources. However, quite a lot of the monitoring is done by the Probation Service. As the noble Baroness is probably aware, the Government are putting a lot of additional resources back into the Probation Service to enable it to do this.

Soon judges will be able to add driving bans and bans on offenders attending pubs, bars, clubs and desirable social activities like sports and concerts, as well as some tough new geographical restriction zones, to the existing tools.

I love that the Minister said that judges will be able to do that. Will she use the new powers, which I think the Attorney-General is taking, to overrule the Sentencing Council if it tries to dilute those powers?

This is probably not the moment for me to embark on that one. This, of course, is simply about agreeing with the Sentencing Council’s guidelines in individual cases, not overriding them. I am confident that agreement will be reached, but, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, perhaps that is one I will deal with another day.

We are also about to expand the intensive supervision courts to deal with the root causes of these crimes by making repeat offenders come back in front of the same judge on regular occasions to see how they are doing. That is what is going to be available to judges.

Let us look at the other side of the coin for a moment. Many shoplifters have complicated backgrounds and complex needs, and sometimes electronic monitoring may not be an appropriate requirement to add to an offender’s sentence, even if this is their third or more offence. Many prolific offenders are homeless and lead chaotic lives. Even getting them to turn up to court on time can be a significant challenge. Imposing an electronic monitoring requirement in some of these cases would be setting the defendant up to fail instead of helping to improve the outcome for the perpetrators and victims of crime and the public at large. It is all entirely case specific, and the judge is the right person to make that decision.

I am proud of our judiciary, which is working hard under very difficult circumstances at the moment, and I am asking noble Lords to trust our magnificent judges, because they do understand the problems that repeat shoplifting can cause and they understand the powers available to them to sentence individual offenders appropriately. This measure would put unnecessary constraints on them and make an already difficult job harder. I can also assure noble Lords that we are continuing to work with cross-government partners and police forces to consider new ways of targeting and tackling persistent and prolific offenders.

Turning now to Amendment 216, we absolutely share the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to see the police take more, and more effective, action against shoplifters, but I am going to give three reasons why the Government do not feel that this amendment is needed. First, the College of Policing has already published guidance on tackling retail crime. That said, we appreciate the need to ensure that this guidance is up to date, and I know that Home Office Ministers will continue to work with the police to make sure that that happens. Secondly, training for police on tackling retail crime already exists. This was produced by the Police Crime Prevention Academy, with funding from the Home Office. In addition, the Government are providing £100,000 of funding in this financial year for the National Police Chiefs’ Council to give further training to police and retailers on prevention tactics.

Thirdly, tackling retail crime requires a partnership approach between policing and business. The previous Minister for Crime and Policing launched the Tackling Retail Crime Together strategy, which was jointly developed by the police and the industry with the aim of providing a collaborative and evidence-based approach to preventing retail crime. This Government want to go further and faster, which is why the Home Secretary announced a “winter of action”. This winter, police forces across England and Wales will again form partnerships with local businesses and authorities to target shop theft and anti-social behaviour during the peak retail season.

I repeat that I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, but I do not believe that—

I thank the noble Baroness for her courtesy and the depth of her reply, but I am not quite sure how we solve the £200 problem. The points she made about enforcement are very good ones, but the difficulty is this belief that if you steal something worth less than £200, nothing will happen to you; thus my parallel with San Francisco. What are we going to do about that?

The first thing we want to do is Clause 39, which, of course, was opposed by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. But in addition, this is about making it clear to everybody that it really does matter, and driving it through to the police that there should be no immunities—that there are no levels below to which this should not apply.

For all these reasons, I do believe these amendments are not required, but I would be very happy to discuss the matters further with both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, and I encourage them to speak with me if they feel there are matters that I have not fully taken into account. But, for now, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his Amendment.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her kind offer.

The Amendment of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe focuses on enforcement. If the police do not investigate theft, if they do not take measures to deter and prevent shoplifting, no amount of legislation will change that. Creating a code of practice for low-value shoplifting could be a step in the right direction. Together with my Amendment 215—and I am grateful, I think, for the implied support of the Liberal Democrats—these measures target enforcement and punishment. This is in stark contrast to what the Government are proposing in Clause 39. The effective immunity for shoplifters comes from the inability of the police to catch those who shoplift. It is an issue of enforcement and investigation, which in turn all comes back to police funding and officer numbers—a point made by the noble Baroness Lady Doocey. Better enforcement is what will drive down shoplifting offence rates, not putting those cases before Crown Court judges. But, for now, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 215 withdrawn.

Amendment 216 not moved.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.14 pm.