The chairman of M&S has said that retail bosses "have to accept police aren't interested" in tackling shoplifting, with his company spending "a lot of money" on its own security. Archie Norman told LBC's Nick Ferrari that his staff "get very little help from the police" in preventing shop theft, which has risen to record levels in the UK overall.Mr Norman said that thefts at Marks and Spencers had actually gone down.
Mr Norman said: "When people are hard up, or particularly when there's a growth in other forms of crime, particularly drugs related crime, then... one way of financing it is to go and steal from shops and it's understandable, given what we've been through in the last couple of years, we'd see more of that."Self-service check-outs have been blamed in part for making shoplifting easier, given the relative lack of staff oversight.