Self-service checkouts are leading ‘good, honest people’ to shoplift, the chairman of Marks & Spencer has said.
Archie Norman said unmanned tills needed to be ‘easier to use’ to help avoid rising rates of thefts, and that the technology had broken the ‘human link’ between retailers and shoppers.
‘When normally good, honest people [are] 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’,’ he said.
Mr Norman explained that he is not calling for the return of in-person checkouts, but said ‘it does mean you’ve got to make the technology easier to use’.
M&S has been installing hundreds more self-checkouts over recent years, with 800 rolled out across its stores in 2023 as it looked to save £150million.
The retail giant has called on London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan to put ‘effective policing’ top of the agenda after one of its stores in Clapham was ransacked by a mob of 100 teenagers 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.’
Mr Norman’s call for more police action and presence has been echoed by other retail bosses.
Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman said self-service checkouts are leading ‘good, honest people’ to shoplift
M&S has been installing hundreds more self-checkouts over recent years, with 800 rolled out across its stores in 2023 alone
Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts said this week the ‘number of serious incidents can be really concerning’, adding: ‘It is the reason we have taken the stance we have, becoming the first retailer to roll out facial recognition to staff.
‘In the stores where it has come in, we have seen a 46 per cent reduction [in thefts] and 92 per cent of offenders have not returned to stores.’
He said a greater police presence would be ‘very welcome’ and ‘make the point that this issue is really serious, it really matters and it’s really top of the agenda’.
Data this week showed there were 509,566 incidents of shoplifting in 2025 – down 1 per cent from the previous year.
But the drop may reflect a change in how shoplifting offences are recorded.
A clarification issued to police by the Home Office last April said that where someone steals, then uses or threatens violence against staff or other people, it should be recorded as robbery, not shoplifting.