Sir Sadiq Khan has blamed London’s recent 50 per cent surge in shoplifting on the fact the city has “a lot of shops” compared with other parts of the country, along with the capital’s particularly high cost of living. Data published by the Office for National Statistics last week showed that 80,041 shoplifting offences were recorded by the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police in the 12 months to September 2024 – up from 53,202 for the same period a year earlier. London’s 50 per cent increase is more than twice as big as the 22 per cent jump seen across the whole of England and Wales in the same period, as shoplifting cases rose overall from 402,482 to 492,914.
