A supermarket boss appeared on Good Morning Britain this week, to urge Britons not to take part in a 'worrying' new trend which he feels has been caused through rising inflation.
Appearing as a guest on the ITV news programme, Iceland's Managing Director, Richard Walker, spoke to Ed Balls and Susanna Reid about problems facing the UK over the ever-rising cost of living crisis. Mr Walker said that soaring food costs have created a rise in cases of shoplifting, with aggressive incidents across Iceland stores also becoming more frequent.
Speaking on GMB, he said: "I get the serious incident reports every week of aggressive behaviour that goes on in our stores and unfortunately it is going up because people are struggling." The Liverpool Echo reports that Susanna was taken back by the worrying rise, and began to quiz Richard on how supermarket staff deal with shoplifters directly.
Read more: Iceland boss says shoppers are putting food back when they hit £40 at the till
He explained: "We're not the police and we do have security guards in some stores, but they will give a written warning or ban the customer from the story if they get aggressive." Rising inflation has sparked Iceland to launch a series of initiatives, to help ease the crisis shoppers are currently faced with. The leading retailer has reduced the threshold for free delivery, as well as freezing the price of hundreds of £1 value lines.
Viewers following Good Morning Britain on Twitter praised the supermarket chain for taking action to help shoppers. @bestchester276 said: "I really like the boss of Iceland and he isn’t afraid to come and answer questions," while Jasmine commented: "I like the boss of iceland...at least he's trying.." David added: "Very impressed by the boss of Iceland."
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