The Reform UK leader said it was “mad” that criminals can get away with taking hundreds of pounds worth of goods without penalty.
Nigel Farage backed our “Stop the Shoplifters” crusade and vowed to keep courts open round the clock to crackdown on crime. Speaking exclusively to our new weekday news show, The Daily Expresso, the Reform UK said the scale of the problem was “extraordinary”. Mr Farage promised a “zero tolerance” approach and said a Reform UK government would lead to genuine change. He told the show: “You are all paying higher prices because of shoplifting. It’s time we got tough.”
The shoplifting crisis is costing stores more than £2.2billion a year with organised crime gangs, from home and abroad, carrying out raids with military efficiency.
Our crusade calls on police to attend every reported theft to end the frustration of business owners up and down the country who are left without any action by their local force.
Speaking about his priorities for government, Mr Farage said: “First things first is to change the mood of the nation.
“We need some positive energy. We need some can-do belief.
“Take areas like crime where I am struck that really the other parties, the police, the courts, have virtually given up.
“Can you believe we’re sitting here and you can lift up to 200 quid without getting prosecuted.
“I mean, can you actually believe that? It’s just extraordinary that we’ve got to that.
“So when we say we are going to turn around crime, we want you to report crime.
“We want to prosecute crime, if it means Magistrates Courts being open 24 hours a day, that’s what we’ll do.
“Seven days a week, that’s what we’ll do. So all people understand there is going to be genuinely a change.”
Shoplifting offences recorded in England and Wales last year topped 500,000 for the first time, with 530,643 offences logged – a 20% rise on the previous 12 months and the most since current recording practices began in 2002-2003.
Meanwhile more than one in 10 retail staff have been threatened with weapons in the past year as shoplifting turns increasingly violent.
Mr Farage added: “We’ve been campaigning all summer on crime. We want to go back to a zero tolerance approach.
“Shoplifters will be prosecuted, not, you know, just take a case of cheap wine, as long as it costs less than £200. The whole thing’s mad.”
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said the neighbourhood policing plan would “reverse the Tories‘ decade of decline”.
But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said law and order was “taking a back seat under Labour.
Mr Farage was speaking to the Daily Expresso, our new weekday show on YouTube, Apple and Spotify.
It is hosted by Express Assistant Editor JJ Anisiobi with regular co-hosts, including our columnists Carole Malone and Esther McVey, along with Belinda de Lucy, a former Brexit Party MEP.
