M&S chairman blames self-checkouts for middle-class shoplifting
Archie Norman said self-service technology needed to be “easier for people to use” to help avoid rising rates of shoplifting at unmanned checkouts
Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman has said self-service checkouts are leading “good, honest people” to shoplift.
Listen to this article
Mr Norman said self-service technology needed to be “easier for people to use” to help avoid rising rates of shoplifting at unmanned checkouts, which had broken the “human link” between retailers and shoppers.
Retailers did not “have to bring back in-person checkouts”, but he said “it does mean you’ve got to make the technology easier for people to use”.
He said: “When normally good, honest people come in and they’re buying their shopping and it doesn’t scan, and there’s nobody manning the checkouts, they’re saying: ‘It’s not my fault and I don’t have much time so if I can’t get my strawberries through, I’ll just put them in my basket’.”
The high street retail giant has been installing hundreds more self-checkouts across its stores in recent years, with 800 rolled out across its chain in 2023 as it looked to save £150 million.
Read more: Trump 'to review UK's claim to the Falklands' in bombshell punishment for failure to back Iran War
Read more: Farage 'worried' about Trump’s judgment amid rising UK-US tensions
M&S recently called on London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan to put “effective policing” in the capital top of the agenda after one of its stores in Clapham was ransacked by a teenage mob.
More than 100 teenagers stormed the M&S store on Clapham high street late last month.
Mr Norman told The Daily Telegraph: “When you have gangs of kids coming in and sweeping the shelves, that’s a police event and it requires an active police response.
“When something like that starts to become common it says to everybody, including ordinary citizens, that it’s not safe.”
The call for more police action and presence has been echoed by other retail bosses.
Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts said on Thursday when unveiling the group’s annual results: “The number of serious incidents on some of the key days of the week can be really concerning.
“It is the reason we have taken the stance we have, becoming the first retailer to roll out facial recognition to staff.
“In the stores where it has come in, we have seen a 46 per cent reduction and 92 per cent of offenders have not returned to stores.
He said more police presence in its stores would be “very welcome”.
“It would make the point that this issue is really serious, it really matters and it’s really top of the agenda,” he said.
Official crime data earlier this week showed there were 509,566 incidents of shoplifting last year.
This was down 1 per cent from 516,611 the previous year.
But the drop may reflect a change in the way shoplifting offences are recorded by police forces.
A clarification issued to forces by the Home Office in April 2025 said that where someone has entered a retail premises, steals, then either uses or threatens violence against staff or other people, the offence should be recorded as robbery of business property, not shoplifting.
This change may also account for the steep increase last year in offences classed as robbery of businesses, which rose 78 per cent from 14,691 in 2024 to 26,158 in 2025.