London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been ridiculed for claiming that shoplifting has soared in the capital ‘because we have a lot of shops’.
The Labour mayor, who was knighted in the King’s New Year’s honours list, was speaking after official figures revealed that 80,041 shoplifting offences were recorded in the year to September, up from 53,202 the year before.
The 50 per cent rise is more than double the 22 per cent rise across England and Wales as a whole, and comes at a time when the number of shops is falling.
Challenged on why London is bearing the brunt he said: ‘Because we have a lot of shops here, and because the cost-of-living crisis is more acute in the capital city.
‘Personal theft and personal robbery is a big concern for me in London, as well.’
The city has around 40,000 retail outlets but the surge cannot be explained by a 50 per cent rise in the number of shops as the number actually fell by nearly 400 in the year to June, according to analysts at PwC.
And critics on social media were quick to slam the mayor’s analysis. One said: ‘Well would you adam it… London has a lot of shops. What is going on in that man’s head?’
More than 13,000 shops shut for the last time across the UK last year with competition from online retailers and increased rents partly to blame.
But the wave of shoplifting has driven many to the wall and the Centre for Retail Research predicts the trend will accelerate this year.
Pandora, Swarovski, Bershka, Urban Outfitters and River Island have all announced plans to close their flagship stores in London’s Oxford Street amid warnings that official crime figures dramatically underestimate the scale of the problem.
An average of 55,000 thefts a day now take place in Britain’s shops according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), up by a quarter in the last 12 months.
Violent thefts involving a weapon take place 70 times a day with retailers blaming a surge in organised gangs stealing to order.
‘People in retail have been spat on, racially abused, and threatened with machetes,’ said BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson.
‘Every day this continues, criminals are getting bolder and more aggressive.’
The crimewave has produced a flood of chilling videos filmed by despairing traders and customers and uploaded to social media.
Many of the shoplifters appear to have no fear of the staff, or of the cameras, as they brazenly load up with their goods and saunter out of the stores.
Last month a gang of at least of eight hooded youths raided an Apple store in north London in a shocking daytime heist one Sunday afternoon.
A sea of shoppers, including parents with young children, could be seen dramatically fleeing the store as the mob ripped out expensive devices around them in a raid that took just 24 seconds.
Last year another pair of thieves were filmed calmly clearing the shelves in a north London Boots store just 200 yards from Chingford Police Station.
The men carried on impassively as a woman dialled 999 within earshot and pleaded for a police response, before both sauntered out.
But occasionally the criminals do not have it all their own way and last month one very unlucky shoplifter strolled into a south London Co-Op where a Metropolitan Police officer had taken up position in a back office.
When Derick Bell began loading up food from the fridge he was charged down and arrested by Lambeth Police Inspector Darren Watson who had spotted him on the store’s CCTV monitors.
And in May last year a suspected shoplifter was dragged into the storeroom at a Sainsbury’s in east London where staff appeared give him a kicking.
Shocked shoppers captured the scene at the local supermarket on Mile End Road in Tower Hamlets where angry staff yelled at the man to ‘stay the f*** down’ while he shouted ‘Allahu akbar’.
Retailers have despaired since a 2014 change in the law meant shoplifters have to have stolen at least £200 worth of goods before they can be given a jail term.
The government has promised to abolish the £200 threshold and has agreed make attacks on shop staff a specific offence in England and Wales, as it already is in Scotland.
The upcoming Crime and Policing Billis expected in the coming weeks and marks a victory for The Mail, which led the way on exposing abuse against store workers and shoplifting, and called for authorities to take the issue more seriously.
The campaign began after Tesco boss Ken Murphy revealed that every frontline worker was to be offered a body camera due to a rise in attacks.
The current laws mean that theft has been ‘decriminalised’, according to Lord Stuart Rose, the former boss of Asda and Marks & Spencer.
But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted the country could not tolerate ‘a situation where shoplifters can walk in, shoplift and walk back out again and nobody can do anything about it’ last year.
The frequency of attacks mean that many of the 3 million people working in the retail industry are terrified to come to work, according to The Retail Trust.
‘People are contacting our helpline in their thousands to report horrifying incidents of abuse and violence and many say that they are now at breaking point,’ Chris Brook-Carter, the organisation’s chief executive, said.
The London Mayor is also under pressure after the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showed an 18 per cent rise in knife crime, compared to four per cent rise in the rest of the country.
Robberies in London rose nearly 10 per cent to 35,500 and the total number of recorded crimes hit 952,400.
He said rising prices had also contributed to some of the increases in crime.
‘As the cost-of-living crisis gets worse, acquisitive crime is going to go up, and has gone up,’ he explained.
‘Three areas where acquisitive crime has gone up – personal theft, personal robbery, and shoplifting.
‘I’ve been out on patrols myself with neighbourhood teams, in Waterloo and elsewhere, where the work they’ve been doing with the retailers, using facial recognition, having good neighbourhood watch teams, has led to a reduction in those particular shops.
‘I’m really pleased that the Home Secretary has now convened a roundtable to address this issue, which includes concerns around shoplifting.’