Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman has blamed self-service checkouts for a rise in shoplifting, claiming the technology has broken the “human link” between retailers and shoppers.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Norman said that “normally good, honest people” are more likely to steal when items do not scan and there is no staff member present to assist. He explained: “When normally good, honest people come in and they’re buying their shopping and it doesn’t scan, and there’s nobody manning the checkouts, they’re saying: ‘It’s not my fault and I don’t have much time so if I can’t get my strawberries through, I’ll just put them in my basket’.”
While Mr Norman did not call for a return to fully staffed checkouts, he stressed that retailers must “make the technology easier for people to use” to help curb theft. M&S has been installing hundreds of self-service checkouts across its stores, rolling out 800 in 2023 alone as part of a plan to save £150 million.
Separately, Mr Norman urged London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan to prioritise “effective policing” in the capital after a teenage mob ransacked an M&S store in Clapham. More than 100 teenagers stormed the store on Clapham high street late last month. Mr Norman said: “When you have gangs of kids coming in and sweeping the shelves, that’s a police event and it requires an active police response. When something like that starts to become common it says to everybody, including ordinary citizens, that it’s not safe.”
Other retail leaders have echoed the call for greater police presence. Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts said on Thursday that the number of serious incidents was “really concerning”. He noted that Sainsbury’s had become the first retailer to roll out facial recognition technology for staff, leading to a 46% reduction in incidents, with 92% of offenders not returning to stores. He added that more police presence would be “very welcome” and would highlight the seriousness of the issue.
Official crime data released earlier this week recorded 509,566 incidents of shoplifting last year, down 1% from 516,611 the previous year. However, this decline may be due to a change in recording practices. A Home Office clarification issued in April 2025 instructed police forces to record incidents where a person steals and uses or threatens violence as robbery of business property, not shoplifting. This change likely contributed to a 78% rise in business robberies, from 14,691 in 2024 to 26,158 in 2025.
