Should Greggs put security tags on its sausage rolls?

The wildly successful high-street bakery Greggs – whose Steak Bakes are a national institution, and whose new Mac & Cheese has already become a TikTok sensation – has finally had its fill of petty thieving. Having become known as something of a shoplifters’ paradise, it is to crack down on the snatch-and-grab pilferers.

Such has been the increase in shoplifting throughout its 2,600-plus stores that head office has decreed that some of its on-the-go sandwich ranges are to be moved from self-serve fridges and into glass-screened units behind the counter. In order to get a ham baguette in some shops, customers will have to ask a server.

Five stores located in “shoplifting hotspots” – which include Whitechapel, in east London – will trial the new shop format, to see if it has a meaningful impact on what the company describes as “anti-social behaviour”, but which others might prefer to call “criminal activity”.

It’s a small start, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it extended throughout the chain – and even to other food retailers.

Shoplifting has become one of Britain’s growth industries. According to the latest British Retail Consortium (BRC) annual crime survey, there were more than 20 million incidents of theft in 2024, up from 16 million in the previous year’s edition.

And sometimes it seems everybody’s doing it. Earlier this month, security experts reported a massive increase in thefts by pensioners, estimating that 5 per cent of all those caught shoplifting by staff on a weekly basis were aged over 50.

Even a cursory glance at the numerous video clips posted by law-abiding Greggs customers on social media hints at the scale of the problem: construction workers in hi-vis with their sandwich meal deals, blithely walking out without paying, gangs of teenagers making off with armfuls of sandwiches.

One of the problems cited by retailers is that thefts from food stores such as Greggs are low-risk and low-impact (on the thief). Prevention measures, such as theft-proofed store layouts, security tagging and other such measures, will clearly help. But changing that also requires that the police take the issue seriously – not easy, when the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act itself classifies circumstances where the value of stolen goods does not exceed £200 as “low-value shoplifting” and thus of far less interest to the authorities.

In the same way staff on the London Underground are advised by managers not to physically stop or detain fare-dodgers, shop workers are dissuaded from preventing thefts from happening over fear of reprisals and the bodily harm they may incur from stepping in. That said, one Greggs outlet in south London saw thefts reduce when its soft drinks cabinet was secured with a bike lock.

Stealing sandwiches is far from a victimless crime. In fact, the chief victims of lunch thieving are Britain’s poor. Retail is a low-margin business. To mitigate against the scale of the thieving at Greggs, prices are now going up accordingly – in what has inevitably been dubbed a new “pasty tax”.

Those who would benefit most from lower prices are those on low to modest incomes, for whom the food bill and other essentials eat up a disproportionate amount of the household budget. Shoplifting is less a crime of the poor than it is a pox on them. It is yet more evidence of “broken Britain”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t reducing anti-social behaviour one of the “six key promises” on which Keir Starmer set out his stall during the election campaign? If Labour’s priorities are social justice (don’t laugh) and helping “working people” (whatever that means), it should act to keep down the price of a Greggs pasty.