The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Retail and Business Crime (APPG-RBC) – founded and chaired by Mike Weatherley MP and supported by the National Business Crime Forum (NBCF) – recently invited crime prevention minister Baroness Browning to a discussion focusing on the current deficiencies in protecting businesses against being targeted by criminals.
Group members warmly welcomed commitments from the minister to investigate and remedy the fact that the Ministry of Justice’s Victims’ Charter fails to recognise businesses as victims of crime – a crucial omission highlighted as wholly inadequate by the recent riots across England that saw businesses by looters, vandals and arsonists.
The Group applauded Baroness Browning’s stated commitment to ensure that the current inaccurate reporting and recording of crime is addressed, while at the same time fully recognising that this will impact the current statistics (demonstrating that offences committed in shops, for example, have decreased).
Indeed, the minister acknowledged it’s possible that 40% of crimes pass by unreported, as estimated by the British Retail Consortium’s latest Annual Crime Survey.
Businesses must be encouraged to report crime
With a forthrightness particularly appreciated by the Group’s members, the minister suggested that businesses do need to be encouraged to report crime where they currently do not, and that the way in which crimes are recorded needs to change to avoid masking problem areas in order that the true scale of crime and its trends can be accurately identified and addressed.
In a move that demonstrated Baroness Browning fully intends to ‘put her money where her mouth is’, the minister also confirmed at the talks that the responsibility for compiling the statistics on crime has recently been moved from Government departments to the Office of National Statistics: this ensures independence as part of the minister’s commitment to uncovering the true scale of crime.
Also, the minister expanded on the importance of understanding the barriers to reporting crime and making reporting crime easier and faster by agreeing to liaise with private sector scheme Facewatch, which has been set up in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Service to do just that (and is launching live across the whole of the UK at the end of the month).
Frustrations shared by the police
Simon Gordon, the founder of Facewatch, said: “As the owner of Gordon’s Wine Bar, I know the frustrations experienced by businesses in reporting crime. As the founder of Facewatch, I also know that these frustrations are shared by the police. I thoroughly welcome the minister’s invitation to liaise with her and her officials in using my business experience to develop Facewatch and help inform her of recommendations for change in the way crimes are reported and recorded.”
Facewatch is an online crime reporting system designed for businesses to report crime. Developed in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Service, it affords the full evidential package required by the police in a faster and more efficient manner, allowing businesses to share images of suspects between themselves and to build a case against prolific offenders across police authorities.
Mike Weatherley – the MP for Hove and Portslade – commented: “The recent riots have demonstrated that focusing on preventing and protecting businesses from being the victims of crime has been long overdue. It has been absolutely timely that this All-Party Parliamentary Group was formed. The newly-appointed Minister for Crime Prevention has marked her commitment to tackling the issues by addressing our Group in such a thorough, full and frank manner.”
Currently numbering 35 MPs among its ranks, the All-Party Parliamentary Group was set up by Weatherley and colleagues in March this year expressly to mobilise the backbenches and catch the attention of the Home Office and the minister to bring about change.
Weatherley added: “It’s astounding that in only its second sitting the All-Party Parliamentary Group has successfully managed to do just that. The very fact that businesses who wrote to their MPs only a few months back to urge the formation of the Group have achieved their goal of a fair hearing in their call for change speaks volumes for the power of democracy. I look forward to working with the minister on these issues.”
Relegation to the realms of ‘victimless crime’
Parminder Singh, chairman of the National Business Crime Forum and former president of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, added: “I’m a small shop owner and know very well that, in recent years, the way the Government has viewed retail and business crime has been increasingly to relegate it to the realms of ‘victimless crime’. This attitude has permeated the conscience of criminals who have grown increasingly bold in their view that they’re given carte blanche to target businesses – from the horrific scenes of small shops decimated by thieves and arsonists through to large corporations who face the crippling daily occurrence of metal theft.”
The National Business Crime Forum is an umbrella organisation representing ACPO, the Association of Convenience Stores, regional business and fraud crime forums, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Business, the Home Office, the National Farmers’ Union, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, Retailers Against Crime, The Security Institute and the University of Central Lancashire (to name a few).
Singh concluded: “On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of UK businesses represented by the NBCF, I would like to thank the minister for speaking at such great length and with such forthrightness to the Group, and finally demonstrating the Government’s commitment to work in proper partnership to say that ‘Britain is truly open for business’.”
The most salient points from the meeting with Baroness Browning, then, are as follows:
- the minister is going to redress the fact that the Ministry of Justice’s Victim’s Charter does not accept businesses can be victims of crime
- the Minister is committed to addressing the reported 40% of crimes that go unreported and the inaccurate reporting of crime, fully understanding that it will lead to a ‘spike’ in the apparent prevalence of crime with an emphasis on the importance of ascertaining proper figures
- as part of the ‘de-politicisation’ of crime figures, Baroness Browning has handed responsibility for managing figures to the ONS to ensure independence
- the minister is also going to work with private sector scheme Facewatch (which is backed by Big Brother Watch, the ‘anti-CCTV’ group)
- through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Retail and Business Crime, the minister is going to work with business in meaningful partnership (business genuinely welcomes this as the Group was set up at least in part out of a frustration that Government was not taking business crime seriously enough and is now hopeful of a continued working relationship with the minister)