Kingdom Services boss says retailers seeing ‘different sort of shoplifter’ with more theft by people ‘who just can’t afford food’
Food retailers have seen a “massive” increase in pensioner shoplifters over the last year, according to a leading store security firm, amid the rising cost of living.
John Nussbaum, director of service for retail at Kingdom Services Group, has said his staff were seeing a “different sort of shoplifter now” as the cost of living “pushes people to something they’ve never done before”.
Kingdom, which provides services for hundreds of stores across the country, including supermarkets, convenience stores and shopping malls, has received 20 to 30 reports of shoplifting a week from across the UK involving “people who just can’t afford to buy food”, Nussbaum said.
He told PA Media: “We’ve seen a massive increase in pensioners shoplifting, putting a jar of coffee in their bag and one in the trolley, that sort of thing.”
He estimated that 5% of all those caught shoplifting by Kingdom staff on a weekly basis were aged over 50.
“For us over the last 12 months, we’ve got this different level of crime now. We’re now experiencing something different – pensioners, people who don’t normally shoplift,” Nussbaum said, adding: “We’ve had instances of mothers caught shoplifting when they’re with their kids.
“We’re used to seeing the organised gangs, that’s the norm, but the types of people being caught now has changed.
The right to social security is enshrined in several international agreements on human rights. But the UK’s system – even before the disability benefits cuts announced earlier this year – falls way below these standards.
For a new report published today, Amnesty International asked my colleague Lyle Barker and me to review the evidence about the state of the UK’s social security in relation to international human rights law.
The UK has signed and ratified a number of international agreements on human rights. One of these is the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which lays out the right to social security. An accompanying document defines the three key principles of this right as:
Availability A social security system established in law, administered publicly, and materially reachable by those who need it.
Adequacy Benefits must be suitable, both in amount and in duration, to realise essential socioeconomic rights.
Accessibility Everyone should be covered by the social security system, paying particular attention to disadvantaged and marginalised individuals and groups.
The conclusion of our study for Amnesty International is crystal clear: even disregarding the cuts announced in March, the UK’s social security system does not meet these standards.
Availability
Our review of the literature shows a widespread underclaiming of benefits. It has been estimated that in 2024, £22.7 billion in income-related benefits went unclaimed, a £4 billion increase from the previous year.
Gaps in official data hinder a clear understanding of why many people are missing out on the support they are entitled to. But qualitative evidence suggests this is largely due to fear, stigma, bureaucratic and digital hurdles, and eligibility cliff edges for means-tested benefits.
In recent years, the UK government has adopted a contentious and punitive stance toward benefit recipients. Media and political rhetoric have portrayed those who claim benefits as idle or undeserving scroungers.
This stigma harms the mental health and self-esteem of people experiencing poverty. It can result in shame and secrecy, and create barriers to people accessing support they are entitled to.
Our research for Amnesty International concludes that UK claimants do not get enough information and support about their rights to benefits. Combined with the stigma of claiming, the UK is falling far short of making benefits “available” in line with international standards.
Adequacy
Since the austerity policies of the 2010s, the UK’s social security system has become significantly less adequate in supporting vulnerable people and families. The basic rate of universal credit (the main benefit for working-age people on a low income) is at 40-year low in real terms amid a cost of living crisis.
Restrictive policies, such as the benefit cap (introduced in 2013 to set a maximum limit to the total benefits received by a household) and the two-child limit have curtailed access to essential benefits. Although inflation adjustments in the last two years provided some relief, many benefits still fail to keep up with rising living costs.
The two-child limit is the cruellest expression of the inadequacy of the UK’s social security system. Introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, the two-child limit restricts financial support through universal credit to two children. It is likely to be the most significant single cause of child poverty in the UK, including in families where adults work but do not earn enough to make ends meet.
When Labour returned to power, there was much speculation about whether they would reverse the two-child limit. But despite pleas from experts and people with direct experience, the government has persisted in retaining it.
Accessibility
Our study lays out the many barriers to accessibility in the UK’s system. For example, the bureaucratic hurdles in the assessment process, and the disproportionate impact of punitive sanctions on lone mothers and on minority ethnic claimants.
The UK operates a benefits sanction regime, which imposes penalties on claimants who fail to meet certain conditions. These include attending jobcentre appointments or accepting job offers. In general, sanctions and the fear of sanctions erode the trust between benefit claimants and the social security system.
Benefits sanctions are just one of the barriers to accessing social security. 1000words/Shutterstock
As it did in its previous review in 2016, in February the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recommended that the UK review the use of benefit sanctions to ensure they are used proportionately and are subject to prompt and independent dispute resolution mechanisms.
Another accessibility concern is the shift to a digital-by-default system in the 2010s. While intended to make accessing benefits more efficient, it has become an administrative barrier.
Many people, particularly the elderly and others who are less digitally literate, struggle to navigate the benefits system. It excludes people without reliable internet access, underscoring a digital divide that prevents meaningful access to social security.
Meeting standards
Given the evidence, it is no surprise that earlier this year, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urged the UK government to assess the cumulative effects of the austerity measures introduced in the 2010s.
In particular, the committee recommended reversing the two-child limit, the benefit cap and the five-week delay for the first universal credit payment, and increasing the budget allocated to social security. These recommendations were made before the changes announced in the spring statement.
To live up to the internationally recognised right to social security, the UK should recognise in law, policy and practice that social security is a human right. And, that it is essential to the fulfilment of other human rights.
Amnesty International recommends the government set up a commission with statutory powers, to produce a strategy for “wholesale reform” of the social security system. The UK must establish a minimum support level and an essentials guarantee, to ensure beneficiaries can consistently meet their basic needs. A good way to start would be abolishing the two-child limit once and for all.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
In a letter to Keir Starmer, Child Poverty Action Group estimated that the number of children in poverty would rise to 4.8 million by 2029 unless action was taken. Photograph: Adam Angelides/Getty Images
Sources says government is ‘not going to find a way’ to ditch cap despite predictions that child poverty levels will soar
Ministers are privately ruling out scrapping the two-child benefit cap despite warnings from charities that a failure to do so could result in the highest levels of child poverty since records began.
Government sources said charities and Labour MPs who were concerned that wider benefit cuts would push more families into poverty should “read the tea leaves” over Labour’s plans.
“If they still think we’re going to scrap the cap then they’re listening to the wrong people. We’re simply not going to find a way to do that. The cap is popular with key voters, who see it as a matter of fairness,” one source said.
In a letter to Keir Starmer on Tuesday, groups including Barnardo’s, Save the Children UK and Citizens Advice said scrapping the two-child benefit limit would be the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty.
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In their letter to Starmer, they said: “Scrapping the two-child limit is by far the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. It would lift 350,000 children out of poverty overnight and result in 700,000 children living in less deep poverty.
“If it is not scrapped, the stark reality is that child poverty will be significantly higher at the end of this parliament than when the government took office, making this the first time a Labour government would leave such a legacy.”
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Zionist Keir ‘Kid Starver’ Starmer. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.
‘We are being asked to take a leap of faith. It does not make sense’: Neil Duncan-Jordan, Labour MP for Poole. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian
Dozens of MPs are angry at their party, despite frantic efforts by whips and government ministers to assuage them
Labour MPs opposed to the government’s massive £5bn of benefit cuts say they will refuse to support legislation to implement them, even if more money is offered by ministers to alleviate child poverty in an attempt to win them over.
Legislation will be introduced to the House of Commons in early June to allow the cuts to come into force. They will include tightening the criteria for personal independence payments (Pip) for people with disabilities, to limit the number of people who can claim it. Under the changes, people who are not able to wash the lower half of their body, for example, will no longer be able to claim Pip unless they have another limiting condition.
A major rebellion appears to be hardening on the Labour benches rather than subsiding, despite frantic efforts by whips and government ministers to talk MPs round.
One idea being floated as a way to win over rebels is for ministers to publish their long-awaited child poverty strategy shortly before the key Commons votes, and in it offer additional money for poor parents of children under five. Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall is understood to be examining a proposal focused on the youngest children that would cost less than the £3.6bn needed to scrap entirely the controversial two-child limit on benefit payments. It is now accepted in government that, given the state of public finances, the cap cannot be scrapped in the short term.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so muchAngela Rayner wears her “benefits in kind” donation from multi-millionaire Lord Alli.
(left to right) Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner clap their hands during the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, September 22, 2024
NATIONAL Education Union (NEU) president Sarah Kilpatrick slammed Labour’s renewed austerity today, telling the NEU annual conference that Tory welfare cuts had killed her disabled father.
She accused ministers of “perpetuating and repeating the shameful pattern of punching-down and finger-pointing” by “balancing the books on the backs of the poor.”
On the first day of the conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, she described how her father had died at the age of 56 after being stripped of his disability benefits under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
She said that she had experienced poverty as a working-class child in Newcastle upon Tyne and was his carer for a number of years.
“As Iain Duncan Smith gleefully applauded the welfare cuts, I represented my father in a tribunal against the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] decision to remove his disability benefits,” she told delegates.
“He’d had his gas cut off. Couldn’t afford groceries. His elderly mother was adding tins of food to her shopping to bulk up what I was buying for him, but he isolated himself further still.
“He lost a lot of weight during that time and never really recovered.”
In 2013, her father became one of an estimated 120,000 people who died as a result of the Tories’ austerity programme, she said.
“When Wes Streeting brags to the Tories across the benches that Labour have done what they never could and slashed the welfare bill, this is what they mean,” said Ms Kilpatrick.
“Let’s be clear. Nearly two decades of economic permacrisis has not been caused by disabled people.”
Nor has it been caused by the elderly, refugees, the trans community or children in poverty, she said.
