Thieves target stores every TWO seconds in Britain, costing retailers more than £1billion last year alone, shocking figures show - as Suella Braverman backs a Mail campaign to end the shoplifting epid

The Mail on Sunday today reveals the shocking reality of the epidemic of shoplifting that is blighting Britain, as we launch a major campaign to crack down on the crime. The Mail on Sunday's campaign – calling for the police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts to be much tougher with shoplifters, and for a change in the law to make abuse or violence towards shop staff a specific offence – comes after the boss of the country's largest supermarket, Tesco, highlighted the issue in last week's paper. Last night, former Home Secretary Priti Patel said: 'I support The Mail on Sunday's campaign and the police must take robust action to protect our nation's hard-working shopkeepers from criminals. Home Office sources said Policing Minister Chris Philp was 'very sympathetic' to the campaign and has said that police should have a zero tolerance policy towards shoplifting, and that the force should look into every crime where there was CCTV footage of it taking place. Officers apprehend a thief as he tries to make a getaway with his stolen goods The scale of the problem in the UK is immense: ●More than ten million shoplifting cases – nearly 30,000 a day, or one every two seconds – were recorded last year, up 25 per cent on 2021; ●Police data suggests a rise of up to 75 per cent in theft of food, drink and essential items such as baby formula and laundry tablets; ●Criminal gangs regard stores as soft targets and systematically strip them of high-value goods; ●Last year 850 violent incidents were committed every day in shops; ●One in eight shop bosses no longer report shoplifting incidents because they say police are uninterested.