There is a shop owner in Yorkshire who has spent thousands of pounds of his own money on security and is still being robbed six times a week. Six times. That single fact tells you more about the state of law and order in Britain than any government statistic. Parliament can pass all the legislation it likes, but if the thieves know no one is coming to arrest them, the law is just words on a page.
The Law Has Changed. Has Anything Else?
The Crime and Policing Act 2026, which received Royal Assent in April, does contain welcome measures. It scraps the notorious £200 threshold that effectively told police to ignore lower-value shoplifting. It creates a specific offence of assaulting, threatening or abusing a retail worker, carrying up to two years in prison. On paper, this is progress. But criminals do not read the statute book. They read the streets, and what they see is a police service that too often does not show up.
For years shoplifting was decriminalised in all but name. Gangs walked into stores, filled bags in full view of staff and cameras, and strolled out knowing the odds of consequences were close to zero. A new law does not reverse that overnight. Only visible, reliable enforcement does, and that requires officers on the beat, not legislation in Westminster.
When the State Retreats, Communities Pay
This is about far more than stock losses. When a shopkeeper is assaulted and nothing happens, the message to the whole community is that the rules no longer apply. Anti-social behaviour spreads. High streets that should be the heart of a town become no-go zones after dark. The breakdown of order in our retail centres is the visible edge of a wider collapse in basic policing that ordinary people see every single day.
Glimpses of What Works
It is not hopeless. When the Metropolitan Police mounted a concentrated operation in Wembley at the start of June, the result was 64 vehicles seized, 32 arrests and five weapons recovered in a single day. Proof that proactive, visible policing delivers. The tragedy is that such operations are the exception rather than the rule. Britain does not lack the capacity to enforce the law. It lacks the political will to make enforcement routine.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would put police back on the streets and back into our town centres, with a clear instruction: enforce the law without fear or favour. We would adopt zero-tolerance policing, so that shoplifting, assault on shop workers and anti-social behaviour are met with arrests and charges every time, not crime numbers logged and filed. And we would back the shopkeepers and small businesses who are the backbone of our communities, instead of leaving them to defend themselves while the state looks the other way. Safe streets are not a luxury. They are the first duty of government.