Policing Minister urges shops to rethink layouts to curb soaring shoplifting rates

Shop theft has recently reached a 20-year high, with over half a million (530,643) recorded offences in the year to March 2025 - a near-20% increase compared to the previous year.

Retail groups warned that organised gangs were “hitting store after store” as shoplifting was "spiralling out of control”, calling on the government to take steps to tackle the crime.

But Dame Diana said shops can do more to prevent shoplifting themselves, including changing their layout.

“There is an issue about designing stores… so that items that are easily nickable are not at the front of the store,” she told LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast.

“That seems to me a responsibility of shops to make sure they're designing out that kind of behaviour… Not everything’s nickable, not everything’s of the value that people will want to nick. Because people nick things that they could sell.”

“If you put rump steak or bottles of alcohol at the front of the store, that's probably not a good idea,” she added.

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The Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North also recalled a shop theft she witnessed herself, which left her “gobsmacked”.

“I was in Marks and Spencer in Hull, and a man came in front of me and grabbed the largest bunch of flowers off the flower display in Marks and Spencer at the front of the store and marched out with it,” she said.

“I was gobsmacked, to be honest. I went straight away to the assistant to say, ‘That man's just nicked those flowers’. So I did what was right. I reported it.

“I was so gobsmacked that he had the brazenness to do that, to be honest… I wanted to report it to the store, I wanted to make sure it was reported because that’s another issue, that stores need to report this so police know where the problems are.”

It comes after Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said members of the public have a responsibility to stand up to shoplifters, and that people shouldn’t rely solely on police.

He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”

Speaking at a meeting of the Thames Valley police and crime panel in June, Mr Barber said that “we should all be responsible citizens in our community.”

“If you’ve got someone in your store now stealing from you, call 999. Also ideally try and stop them leaving, don’t just stand there and watch, which a lot of people do, which frustrates me.”

When asked if she agrees with Mr Barber, Dame Diana said: “What I support is the 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers that I want to see back in our communities to provide that presence, to stop the shopfront theft and shoplifting going on as it is at the moment.

Earlier this year, Labour promised to deploy 13,000 more police officers to British streets by 2029 in a bid to reduce crime, including thousands of named neighbourhood police officers.

Explaining how the neighbourhood policing programme will work, she said: “If you go on your local force site, Humberside is mine, it will pull up all the named officers for your patch and you can put whatever your concern is about your neighbourhood.

And all forces have agreed they will be responding within 72 hours. You can obviously do this by telephone as well, if you're not able to go online. This is not for emergencies. For emergencies, its 999, if non-emergency 101.

“This is if you've got an issue that you're concerned about, say you're just worried that there's antisocial behaviour developing in the local park, you'd like the police to have a look at what they can do.”