John Lewis boss Sharon White has cautioned that criminals have a “licence to shoplift” following a rise in cases spurred by the cost-of-living crisis.
The chairwoman has called for better protection from threats and abuse for store employees in England after a change to the law in Scotland.
White said shoplifting had surged 26%, citing recent research by the British Retail Consortium which found more than 850 incidents of violence and abuse towards shop workers are recorded every day.
“It’s a crisis that is hiding in plain sight,” she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
“One of the big issues for John Lewis is staff safety,” White said. “Gangs and shoplifters have become much bolder given some of the cost-of-living pressures.”
The chairwoman revealed she had witnessed theft first-hand during a visit to the John Lewis store in Glasgow.
“I saw a group of teenage boys hovering around our tech department, clearly looking to pocket some items. I followed them around the store keeping a safe distance until our security team came and the boys were led out empty-handed.
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“The group then made the hour-long journey to our Edinburgh store where they attempted to make off with a large volume of expensive fragrance.
“They were asked to leave by a member of the security team whom they then aggressively pushed out of the way. A customer stepped in to help and was unfortunately hurt in the process.”
She said the police arrived within 20 minutes and arrested the main offender.
Scotland introduced new legislation in 2021 that made it a criminal offence for store employees to be assaulted, threatened or abused while at work, and White has asked for politicians in Westminster to follow suit.
“I have lost count of the number of times I have visited John Lewis or Waitrose branches in England and been told that the police simply don’t have the time or resource to respond to a shoplifting incident,” she said. “[It’s] a licence to shoplift, which is not a victimless crime.”
White also shared that John Lewis was looking at its options on how to bolster growth in the company under its partnership model without access to external finance.
“The question for us as now as a £12.5bn business is how do we fund the growth that we know is there… but doing that in a creative way that keeps the partnership a partnership,” she said.
“I can give a 100 per cent guarantee that the partnership will always be a partnership,” she added, when pushed for assurance.
Last week, John Lewis Partnership’s director of security Lucy Brown told the BBC that the upmarket supermarket had seen “a real increase” of shoplifters, with the majority “shoplifting on a regular basis”.
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