Mike's Minute: Disappointing from Government on retail crime

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The Governmental disappointment of the week for me was the announcement of a panel that will look into retail crime.

It will take two years.

It isn't necessary to gather people to take two years to come up with ideas on what to do with retail crime.

Retail crime isn't cancer. It is a form of societal cancer, but it's not a complex issue the answer to which is only to be found in a lab requiring deep and detailed investigation.

What this announcement is, dare I say it, is the Labour Government reheated.

When you have a problem you are not confident of being able to fix, you create a group to look into it. You give them a generous time frame and you head it, as they have, with one of your biggest critics. In this case it's Sunny Kaushal.

By doing this you take the heat out of the pressure you are under. All questions going forward about retail crime can be answered by saying "yes we share your concern, as do the panel we have set up to look into it, the results of which cannot be far away".

This Government has made it clear that crime has consequences. It's about police presence and charges and courts and sentences.

Sunny Kaushal has been vocal over his ideas, which involves dairy owners being able to make arrests and security guards having more power.

In other words, we already have the answers and, in some aspects, announcements have already been made in terms of sentencing and police on the beat.

Making it worse is when the panel come up with the ideas they already have and have expressed it will require law change. Law change that the Government will then announce will take time.

In that is the problem for Governments - this one doesn’t have time.

They have inherited a societal mess and time is of the essence.

Some of it can't be fixed quickly, but decisions can be made and actions taken.

Setting up a Labour-style committee to do the bleeding obvious isn't it.

If this is their approach to one of our most urgent issues, they will pay the price electorally when results don’t come and patience runs out.

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