Equipment Theft (Prevention) Bill

Debate between Ben Everitt and Greg Smith

2nd reading
Friday 2nd December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith]

It is almost as if my right hon. Friend read my mind, because the very next part of my speech is to say that, despite all those advances and everything else that is offered on modern ATVs, there has not been development of safety and security features that prevent theft, such as immobilisers. Those are a very basic security feature; it is almost unfathomable given that most manufacturers of quads and ATVs tend to make other equipment—motorcycles or construction equipment —that are fitted with immobilisers and other security equipment. It is striking to me, and has been somewhat surprising the more I have researched it, that the rollout of these security features has been so slow that some leading manufacturers have used the very same basic key system for 35 years.

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is easy to say that the best security advice for farmers and ATV owners is to take the key out, but when I was farming, every key seemed to fit every vehicle. When I went home at the end of the day, I would take my key home; it did not matter which tractor I would be driving the next morning, because I knew the key would fit.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend is quite right. Indeed, a lot of the quad bikes and ATVs out there have ignition systems so basic that in some cases people do not even need the key; they can simply start them with a screwdriver or another piece of flat metal. That should really disturb us. We should shine a spotlight on why such equipment can be started in that way.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. With the scale of the theft of quad bikes, ATVs and side-by-sides, we have come to the point where the legislation is simply necessary. With those numbers—800 to 1,100 per year are stolen—something has to give. Farmers, land managers and those who use a quad bike in their businesses need the security of knowing that, when they lock it up in the barn, or wherever they keep it at night, there is a greater chance that it will still be there the next morning. The Bill is not a magic bullet—it will not simply end the theft of all quad bikes and ATVs—but it addresses practical measures such as immobilisers and forensic marking, to ensure a greater chance of equipment and machinery remaining with their owner and shut down the incentives for would-be thieves to steal them.

[Ben Everitt]

The frustrating thing is that the technology is here. Millions of dollars’ worth of John Deere machinery stolen by Russian Federation forces from a dealership in Ukraine was subsequently shut down remotely by John Deere. Will my hon. Friend join me in commending John Deere for its use of technology to stop that theft of agricultural equipment by the Russian state?

[Greg Smith]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in commending John Deere and all manufacturers that put the effort into research and development and into providing such products. Higher-value pieces of agricultural machinery—the tractors, the combines, the sprayers—can be fitted with remote control to shut them down and stop them being used. The Bill focuses on smaller agricultural equipment, but there is no reason why we should stop at that. The more the industry can develop such technologies, the better. If our mobile phones or iPads can be remotely wiped and turned off if someone steals them, so that they cannot be used and the data cannot be extracted, there is no reason why equipment used on farms and on land cannot be treated similarly.

To get back to the central point, when property is stolen it is a nightmare for police and law enforcement to track it and return it to its rightful owner. When the police are called to track down and apprehend a suspect who may have stolen a quad bike or other agricultural equipment from a farm, it really is a race against time. Vehicles such as quads and ATVs are light and easily transportable: within hours, thieves can have them strapped to the back of trailers and towed hundreds of miles from their owners, sometimes heading for seaports where they can be transported to and through any number of countries. By that point, it is simply too late for either the police or the owner to recover the vehicle. That leaves the farmer or landowner with a hefty bill for replacing the whole thing, and productivity lost as a result of no longer having access to such a vital piece of machinery for their business.

On the other side of the same coin, shipping delays, the effects of the covid pandemic and other global factors are contributing to a rise in demand for both new and second-hand farm machinery. As waiting lists grow and market values soar, I am afraid to say that thieves are seeing quads and ATVs as easily portable hot-ticket items.

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[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Some police forces around the country have put in place robust measures, such as my home police force area, Thames Valley. The force has a new rural crimes taskforce that is very much focused on these issues and ensures that officers have the training to understand all forms of rural crime, including hare coursing, and particular elements of agricultural machinery. If someone has never worked on a farm or lived in a rural community, they would not necessarily immediately get what the machinery is on site.

The establishment of rural crimes units in different police forces is a welcome addition to the response to rural crime. It is something that needs to be rolled out across the whole country, because pretty much everywhere has a rural part to it. We need to ensure that, of the additional 20,000 officers this Government are recruiting and providing to our police force, some of that resource goes into fighting rural crime.

[Ben Everitt]

Will my hon. Friend give way one more time?

[Greg Smith]

As my hon. Friend is my constituent, I will give way to him one last time.

[Ben Everitt]

My hon. Friend is very generous. I know he wants to make progress, but will he join me in commending Thames Valley police’s rural crimes taskforce? It has made fantastic progress in tackling rural crime—not just theft of farm machinery, although a significant amount of stolen farm machinery has been recovered by Thames Valley this year, but things such as hare coursing, which is such a blight and such a pain for farmers. It is another one of those complete time hoovers that sucks up time and attention on farms when we should be focusing on productivity.

[Greg Smith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. Thames Valley covers both my constituency and his, and, as I said a few moments ago, the taskforce is making great strides to tackle rural crime, under the wonderful leadership of Inspector Stuart Hutchings, “The Mighty Hutch”. He is doing incredible work to ensure that those who wish to commit crimes in rural Buckinghamshire, and indeed rural Milton Keynes, are held to account, apprehended and prosecuted, and that stolen equipment is returned to its rightful owners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend makes a valid point, and it is something that the rural crime taskforce in my police force area, Thames Valley, and the rural crime units in other police forces, are taking seriously and are trying to get on top of. The statistics speak for themselves. The Bill is a part of the jigsaw puzzle in starting to tackle rural crime. It ensures that, where they cover rural areas, our police forces have the powers, the facilities and the equipment themselves—for example, the scanning equipment for forensic marking—to identify stolen equipment and return it to its rightful owners. These powers will give our police forces greater confidence that they can get on top of rural crime, by identifying stolen equipment, identifying who has stolen it and bringing them to justice.

The Bill, as I said earlier, is no magic bullet; it will not end rural crime overnight. However, it does introduce significant duties for the manufacturers and those who sell this equipment, to help to lift the burden on our farmers of installing all that expensive security equipment and of essentially having to turn their premises—the beating heart of the countryside—into exclusion zones. I am not saying that that other security equipment is not needed—of course it is; every little bit helps—but we must acknowledge as a country that farms being turned into mini-fortresses is not befitting to the countryside, and we need to take other measures, too.

[Ben Everitt]

That is an important point, and I hope my hon. Friend will agree that people who are not from rural communities need to understand how food is produced. If as a nation we are to make the transition to producing, growing and selling our food much more sustainably, the public need to see the process. Turning farms into fortresses is counter to that. Does he agree that we need more accessibility and less security if we are to get more people on farms?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He and I share a passion for farming and ensuring that farming is visible and accessible to everyone in our country. He makes an important point about people understanding how food is produced—that the chicken does not get into the plastic box on the shelves in the supermarket by magic and that the cereal does not make itself in a factory, but has to be grown somewhere first. He almost tempts me to get into the amendment I have tabled to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, but I will leave that for when it comes back on Report—as I hear my hon. Friend the Whip encouraging me to do.

Coming back to the subject at hand, pre-fitting quad bikes and ATVs with the means necessary both to prevent them from being stolen and to effectively track any that are stolen will lift a huge weight off the shoulders of our hard-working farmers. The threat is well documented, and it is more widespread and organised than most think. We are not necessarily talking about a couple of opportunists who are bored and looking for something to fill their time; those who are stealing this equipment are predominantly organised criminal syndicates intent on profiteering from high-value theft.

Let me give the House an example. A prominent recent case of agricultural equipment theft saw the successful prosecution of two men for conspiring to steal agricultural global positioning systems and other technical equipment valued at approximately £380,000 from agricultural vehicles on 13 farms and estates across the county of Essex between 28 September and 27 October 2021. Following investigations by Essex police, they were convicted and sentenced to a total of six years and 10 months in prison.

This Bill will prevent the need to pursue this time-consuming and extremely costly legal process by ensuring that the quads and ATVs, and potentially further equipment in due time through secondary legislation, either cannot be stolen in the first place or, through forensic marking, are made less attractive to the would-be thieves. That case took Essex police a considerable amount of time, a lot of investigation and probably hundreds, if not thousands of hours of police time to get that fantastic prosecution. This Bill is about short-cutting that process for our police and ensuring they can get the result and get justice in much faster time.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) mentioned, Thames Valley police, my own local force and his, reported recently that officers from its groundbreaking rural crime taskforce, which I referred to earlier and which has only been in operation since April this year, has recovered more than 100 items totalling more than £1 million-worth of machinery, tools and equipment, 25% of which were related to theft. Those are investigations resulting in a positive outcome for the victim. That is encouraging and a great start, but we need to go much further and expand that excellent work beyond the individual forces. I am pleased to say that there is already strong engagement on this from both rural representative groups and local law enforcement, but we need to go further by tackling the problem at source.

A good example of the behind-the-scenes work already being done to tackle that type of rural crime is NFU Mutual’s approach, which is based on close co-ordination with national and local police forces, as well as with the manufacturing sector. The dedicated agricultural vehicle theft unit at the national vehicle crime intelligence service saw £2.6 million-worth of stolen machinery recovered in 2021, up from £2.3 million in 2020. Specific measures, such as the funding of CESAR—the construction and agricultural equipment security and registration scheme—forensic markings for 200 quads in Northern Ireland through working with Datatag and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, have contributed to a drop of nearly 20% in the cost of dealing with rural theft in Northern Ireland. Of course, other forensic-marking products and brands are available.

We need to lock in reductions, such as those of that Northern Ireland project, for the whole of our United Kingdom, and for every farm, because each suffers from the same threat. The Bill will provide the groundwork to bring down rates of theft and reduce the overall threat of theft, tackling the problem at source and building on the prevention measures that are already in place.

The cost of not doing that is clear. The CLA estimates that the average financial impact on the victim per rural crime equates to £4,800, and that figure increases each day as supply chain costs and overheads continue to rise. The value of quad bike and ATV thefts reported to NFU Mutual in 2021 was £2.2 million. Almost half those reports were received between September and December, demonstrating the extremely challenging circumstances that we are dealing with and how much is at stake for farmers as the weather begins to turn.

For the 10.3 million people who live in the countryside, this hits right at the heart of everyday life. Rural crime cannot simply sit alongside urban crime, as the CLA makes clear. Difficulties in tracking criminals over such vast swathes of countryside mean that local police forces are always faced with a uphill battle—they have to spread resources over a much larger geographical area compared with their more urban counterparts—and criminals already have a head start.

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[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Often when I come to the House on a Friday, I look at the Order Paper and do not really have a clear position on a Bill. I sit here and listen to the debate and try to work out what the key points are and what position I am going to take. Happily, this morning I am in no such position; I fully support the Bill presented to the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), who I am very pleased to call a friend. I offer him my huge thanks for his work on the Bill, and I extend my thanks to the folk he mentioned, with whom he has worked so hard to bring the Bill to this stage. I know it has been a difficult passage since he came number 4 in the private Member’s Bill ballot.

[Greg Smith]

Number 3.

[Ben Everitt]

Sorry, I did my hon. Friend a huge disservice. He was number 3 in the private Member’s Bill ballot.

I was going to say that many Members on both sides of the House take rural crime incredibly seriously, but it is disappointing to see the lack of numbers on the Opposition Benches.

February Adjournment

Debate between Ben Everitt and Greg Smith

Thursday 13th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) and that powerful maiden speech. I had the pleasure of being teamed up with my hon. Friend when we tramped the streets of Peterborough together during the by-election last June. That election produced the wrong result, but I am glad that the general election produced a better one for my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow). I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud to look after one of my family’s favourite days out: the wetlands centre at Slimbridge, which I believe is in her constituency.

It is also a great pleasure to follow the maiden speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), for Guildford (Angela Richardson), for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) and for Bosworth (Dr Evans). I thought that I had missed many of my colleagues’ maiden speeches when I was on paternity leave the other week, but it turns out that I have more than made up for it by hearing some excellent ones in this debate.

I agree with the sentiment expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) in respect of the items he brought up in his speech. In Buckingham, we are currently also under the threat of a land grab by a neighbouring authority, in our case Labour-run Milton Keynes Council, which wants to expand to a town of 500,000 people. That would involve its coming miles and miles into my constituency—to which, to be very clear, the answer is no.

I wish to raise an issue that is important to my constituents, and it relates to some of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South. The issue is the threat of a brand new road to come through the Buckingham constituency and, indeed, to go through the constituencies of many right hon. and hon. Members. The Oxford to Cambridge expressway is not just a new road but a new road that comes with a desire, along the whole route, for a million new homes.

I am no opponent of house building. We need new homes in our country—new homes that people can afford to buy. Indeed, we also need to build more social housing. However, 1 million new homes across the Buckinghamshire countryside in particular is an unacceptable proposition for my constituents. Let us look at some of the themes that surround the building of this road.

There is a great deal of uncertainty. The Highways Agency has come up with what it calls its preferred route, which is named in typical public-sector speak simply corridor B. Corridor B is actually about three quarters of my constituency. To put it into context, my constituency is 335 square miles, so, were this expressway to go ahead, there would be absolutely no certainty for my constituents about exactly the route that it would follow. It would bring with it significant environmental destruction not just to our beautiful countryside but to wildlife, to ancient woodland, and to our biodiversity. Most important, though, is the effect that it would have on people’s lives and on their property. There would be disruption from the construction and the destruction of their property, as farms are taken, homes are taken, and businesses are taken. Indeed, once it is built—if it goes ahead—there would be the impact of noise, the impact on people’s health, the impact on people’s enjoyment of their property, and, I fear to say, in some cases, the impact on people’s mental health.

The road plus the housing development and the green-belt land that would be required would massively increase the risk of flooding, and we are already suffering considerably in Buckinghamshire from an increase in flooding as a result of over-development. It cannot be lost on the House that, at a time when we are trying to reduce carbon output and get to net zero by 2050, building a new motorway is not a sensible step to take.

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on that point. I should, at this point, declare an interest. As well as knowing his constituency incredibly well—beautiful as it is—I represent a council ward in that constituency, and that council ward is in the corridor, as he described it. Does he agree that there are many things wrong with this idea? There is this idea that building a new road will somehow increase productivity, but we all know that the great cities of Oxford and Cambridge are renowned for their contribution to research and science, and, as far as I know, intellectual property does not travel by road. There is the economic case, which is incredibly flimsy, and my hon. Friend referred to the suspiciously round figure of 1 million new homes. However, as I am sure you will agree Madam Deputy Speaker, it is the environmental case that is the most poignant. Sixty miles of new road, with two and a half miles either side of building, does not make environmental sense.

[Greg Smith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, it is always sensible to listen to one’s constituents, and I am delighted that he has raised that point this afternoon. Indeed, there is significant local opposition to this scheme. Aylesbury Vale District Council, on which my hon. Friend sits, and Buckinghamshire County Council have, on a cross-party basis, opposed the expressway scheme. They should be given full credit for refusing to sign the non-disclosure agreements, which were demanded by the Highways Agency to try to stop them from representing their residents effectively. There are also significant resident groups, both along the entire route of the expressway and, indeed, in Buckinghamshire. I am delighted to say that the No Expressway Group and the Buckinghamshire Expressway Action Group will be coming to Parliament on 26 February to ensure that their voices are heard on this matter. Throughout the general election campaign, and since my election to this House, I have received a significant number of representations from constituents on this matter, so it is very much on the minds of my constituents.

I mentioned earlier that my principal objection to the plan is the impact that it will have on people—the loss of their homes and their farms. I represent a largely agricultural economy. It is a rural constituency on which farming is so dependent, and we cannot keep concreting over those fields. Those businesses sustain our farmers and, indeed, grow and rear the food that we need and enjoy.

I do not want to dwell on this point, but the cumulative impact of building HS2, which was given the go-ahead this week, much to the disappointment of my constituents, and of building the expressway would bring abject misery to my constituents. Then there is the destruction of wildlife. The expressway will have a devastating impact on wildlife along the whole route. Mark Vallance of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust has commented that part of the route would destroy

“one of the most undisturbed and wildlife-rich areas of Buckinghamshire.”

Indeed, let me quote the words on the website of the Wildlife Trust, which are so elegant. It says that what would be destroyed by the expressway are

“stunning wildlife meadows, ancient woodland, hedgerows alive with birds and butterflies, and gentle undulating ridge and furrow fields that have survived since the Middle Ages.”

On the point of homes, I mentioned earlier that I am no opponent of development, but I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South that we should be looking to develop new homes on brownfield sites, not on the green belt, not in the countryside and not on our farmers’ fields. Aylesbury Vale District Council has already been very ambitious in terms of its house building and its local plan. We are talking about some 28,000 new homes, which is a very high number compared with many other district councils covering similar ground. I do feel that Buckinghamshire, particularly the Aylesbury Vale district area, has taken its fair share of new home building, and we should be looking, yes, to the remaining brownfield sites, but also to other places to take their fair share of the new homes. Along the whole arc corridor—the Oxford to Cambridge Arc—some 3,130 hectares of brownfield site have been identified that would be good for house building, and we should look at that first.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) intervened, he mentioned that the economic case is also not right for the expressway. It is projected to cost somewhere between £4 billion and £8 billion. That is an estimate at the start of the scheme, and we know what happens once these schemes start. Indeed, the business case is also very weak, with the benefit-cost ratio at the start of the scheme showing a return between £1.10 and £1.30 per pound spent. I put it to this House that that simply is not good enough.

During the election campaign, I was delighted when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport visited Verney junction in my constituency to discuss this matter. He made a number of pledges and commitments that I want to put on record, as I would very much like to see the Government bring them forward as soon as possible. A priority review of the expressway was promised. He said that he did not think that the case for the expressway stacked up and that we should look at other schemes that could improve east-west travel both by road and by rail. He also talked about cycling through Buckinghamshire instead. In particular, we need to look at improvements to the A41 and the A421—two major A roads that pass through my constituency—to get them moving faster rather than building new roads and, where residents consent to it and where residents want it, we should build all-important bypasses. For example, the residents of the village of Wing in the east of my constituency are very keen to see money brought forward to relieve their village of heavy goods traffic and general traffic as people travel north-south, principally from Aylesbury to Leighton Buzzard and up to Milton Keynes.

I am delighted that the Government have signed off East West Rail. We must ensure that East West Rail happens on time and on budget, and before the final detail is signed off we must keep open the debate for the line to be electrified, rather than running with diesel trains.

In conclusion, the Oxford to Cambridge expressway is the wrong project for my constituency. I can genuinely say that it has virtually no public support in my constituency, or indeed those of other right hon. and hon. Members, so let us have the priority review, stop concreting over Buckinghamshire and look to other projects that can improve the lives of my constituents.