Crime and policing minister Chris Philp holds talks with retailers and senior police figures to agree a joint action plan for tackling rising shoplifting. He began the meeting by saying, “the fact that we are having this meeting in Number 10, I hope, underlines the importance which the government attack to this issue.”
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00:00 And the fact we're having this meeting in Number 10, I hope, underlines the importance
00:05 which the Government, the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and me as Police Minister
00:10 attach to this issue.
00:13 And to Andy Cook, who is Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue
00:19 Services.
00:20 We're here to talk about shotlifting today.
00:23 It's a crime that we take extremely seriously, it's something the Government are extremely
00:27 concerned about, there's been a significant increase in the amount of shotlifting going
00:31 on, it's increased dramatically.
00:34 We're also painfully conscious of the problem of assaults against retail staff.
00:39 Workers who work sometimes for small businesses and sometimes large, serving the public and
00:45 yet they are often placed in the line of danger by VAR and early, and the kind of organised
00:51 looting we see in some American cities is something we are determined to protect the
00:57 United Kingdom.
00:58 We're conscious of the cost which this crime imposes on business, a direct cost of about
01:03 a billion pounds, deeply unsettling.
01:04 And of course there is the risk that what starts off as criminal behaviour around shotlifting
01:11 can escalate to something even more serious, organised criminal gangs in this area as well.
01:17 We're concerned about prolific shotlifters, often fungis.
01:21 This is a crime that we are determined to grip, we're determined to step up the level
01:25 of response from policing and from the Government in partnership with retailers.
01:30 This is something we have to do together, it's for the Government to act, it's for
01:34 the police to act and it's for retailers to act.
01:37 So that is the context, that's the reason that we're here today.
01:40 There are two substantive agenda items we would like to talk about.
01:43 One is the new Police Shotlifting Action Plan which I commissioned as Police Minister and
01:49 Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman on behalf of the MPCC.
01:52 Project Pegasus which Police and Crime Commissioner Katie Bourne from Sussex has been leading
01:57 which marks a step change.
01:59 So those are our two main agendas.