Rural Crime: NFU Mutual Report

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble and learned gentleman. I have been tasked by both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to be the Minister responsible for fraud. This week, I met with officials and I will be meeting with stakeholders. We have a potential examination of a future fraud strategy based on the work of the previous Government. The points that the noble and learned Lord makes are a part of our reflection on that strategy. I will certainly go away and inform myself of what happened under the previous Government in relation to that delay, and how I can expedite this as a matter of some urgency.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I served with the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, on the APPG on metal theft. From the evidence we gathered, it was clear that metal theft is widespread in rural areas. Whatever the picture was when the Minister was last involved in 2013, I think when he returns to the subject he will see that it remains pernicious, widespread and extensive. We are all clear what some of the targets are: church roofs, which have a deadly impact on the villages affected; and, relatively recently, the theft of literally kilometres of copper cable from both the telecoms and rail networks. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, these crimes are committed by organised criminal gangs and, from the evidence we took, frankly there is no cause to think that the police are operating effectively to counter these organised criminal groups.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. The metal theft issue is extremely serious. It is something that the previous Government, with Opposition support, tried to address and reduced by some 50%— but 50% is still there and we need to look at how we can take action on that. He is absolutely right that organised criminal gangs are very often behind this. There has been action from the National Rural Crime Unit and police forces to try to make arrests from those organised criminal gangs. Again, we need to have intelligence-led policing, co-ordination of PCCs feeding in intelligence and a national crime strategy that looks at how we can tackle that still further. That will be on the agenda of the Home Office and I hope that, when I am held to account by the noble Lord in due course, I will have made progress on reducing the 50% still further.