Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, perhaps I may add my voice to those of other Members of your Lordships’ House who have paid tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for the way in which she has introduced this legislation and for her sustained zeal in continuing to focus on this area. When it comes to prizes for sustained zeal, I think that we all are extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for his assiduity in following up this matter.

Of course, we are all grateful to Richard Ottaway. He has produced workable legislation having, as we have heard, worked not only with the Home Office but with the trade and the enforcement agencies to produce something that will make a difference. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has said about the extreme importance of continuing the funding in the short term for Operation Tornado. As we know, it started in the north-east and has demonstrated that cashless transactions and closer ID examination reduce this crime.

However, Operation Tornado has also shown how necessary it is that we should have this new legislation, as the police have no powers to enter unlicensed yards or to close them down if they find strong evidence of illegal trade. It is vital that time is given to get this Bill through the necessary stages. As we have heard, metal theft is a major threat to the infrastructure of the whole country.

Of course, I represent one particular part of this problem and I must declare an interest as chairman of the church and cathedrals division of the Church of England. Perhaps our experience can underline the need for urgency as we look countrywide at a situation where there are, on average, three such thefts a day from churches alone. This year, ecclesiastical insurers already have handled 831 claims between January and October, which, in our small constituency, amounts to £1.5 million.

Security marking, roof alarms and increased vigilance are having some effect. In my diocese a neighbour acted promptly when, detecting people were on the roof lifting the lead, they simply removed the ladders which the felons had used to make their ascent. The neighbour phoned the police and the felons were still there fuming when the constabulary arrived. But those measures are not sufficient.

Since the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has provoked us to give examples, I shall give one or two from all over the country. St Peter’s Plemstall, a grade 1 listed building, is in the diocese of my brother, the Bishop of Chester. Because a comparatively small amount of lead was taken from the central valley of the roof, rain got in. The church had to be closed for several months to enable the interior to dry out. There was thousands of pounds worth of damage to the organ and the roof repairs cost a considerable sum. Those charges fall on volunteers who look after an inheritance of art and architecture which belongs to the whole community.

The church of St Mary, Wrawby, in the diocese of Lincoln, also a grade 1 listed building, has had eight thefts and has no indemnity left on its insurance. Therefore, at the moment the roof is felt, pending yet another campaign to replace it with something more adequate. In my diocese, All Saints Fulham had a bronze memorial sculpture by Helen Sinclair, which was a community, millennium project. Hundreds of people contributed to it. The thieves tried pulling it off its plinth but it had been installed too stoutly, so they took an angle grinder to it. We are looking at replacing it with stone resin. Finally, All Saints’ Church, Evesham, has been the victim of five thefts in seven months. The vicar, Andrew Spurr, has said, “Every time we have a roof replacement bill it damages our ability to serve the community in other ways”. Even the local policeman from the Evesham police station said that it was “an appalling theft from a community building which has only just had the roof replaced following a previous theft”.

I could go on but noble Lords cannot bear it now and I think that we are largely of one mind in your Lordships’ House. But suffice it to say that one-third of our 16,000 parish churches have suffered. There have been 10,700 claims, amounting to £27 million, which certainly is an underestimate of what it has cost local communities to repair the damage.

The scrap metal trade, which is worth more than £6 billion a year, is, as your Lordships know well, vital to the UK economy. Wearing another hat, as chairman of the church’s recycling and conservation campaign, I could not support measures that would harm the trade or have a negative environmental impact, because they do things of considerable value to the whole community.

However, certainly in view of the evidence that we have heard from the trade associations, I most emphatically support this Bill and underline the need to make sufficient parliamentary time available to pass it into law sooner rather than too late. I end again with gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for having brought this matter to the House today.

Railways: Theft

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Monday 3rd October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My noble friend is quite right to draw attention to the problems, but it is not just the police who have a role in this; I am thinking of the previous department which I had the honour to serve in. The Environment Agency also has a role, although, admittedly, that role is reserved purely for environmental matters. There is no reason why that role should not be extended to deal with those who are trading in an irresponsible or criminal manner. Having said that, one should always be aware of the danger that one just shifts the problems on to illegal sites and it is therefore very important that we look very carefully at anything we do and what the consequences of any action are likely to be.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, in comparison with the very large figure quoted, £26 million, which is the bill for the lead theft from church roofs, might strike noble Lords as rather small, but it is a very great pressure on local communities. Is the Minister aware that one step that we believe would have an impact on the problem and to which he has already referred—making cashless transactions the rule for scrap metal merchants—is, in fact, the rule in almost every other European country, including Bulgaria?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for drawing that to our attention and for emphasising the problems that we and the church are facing. I know that he has been in touch with the Home Office and that Ministers have responded to the church’s concerns about these matters. He is quite right to draw attention to the advantage of the cashless model, but there are other matters that we could look at, such as design, material and even, I understand, reviewing the properties of the copper and lead themselves to see whether they can be made more traceable in due course.

Multiculturalism: Interfaith Dialogue

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, it is a very great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, because I think that he has done more than almost anybody to provide us with a vocabulary—a grammar— that commends and communicates the dignity of difference. I know that I speak for many people when I say how grateful we are.

I declare an interest as the president of St Ethelburga's Centre for preventing and transforming those conflicts that have a religious dimension. The centre was established in a church bombed by the IRA—of course there is a conflicted history there—with the support of Cardinal Hume and indeed of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, who is Chief Rabbi, and various Muslim friends as well. I mention that not just to draw attention to a piece of work that is relevant to the debate initiated—for which we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell—but to acknowledge a recent shift in attitudes that, I am glad to say, has already been reflected in government policy. After the very serious disturbances in the northern cities, the subsequent reports and discussion tended to suggest that religion was a problem and that faith schools were a problem. Of course, faith schools are rather different from the church school that the Chief Rabbi attended. It is a quite different idea. We resent very deeply being lumped into that constituency. However, after the northern cities, there was quite an emphasis on religion as a problem.

What happened at the riots in August? Religious tensions did not play a part. Actually, parishes and religious communities were in the forefront of trying to help. That enormously impressive plea from the father of that young man, with the subsequent prayer meeting, was an example of that. Here is another extraordinary example from Tower Hamlets. Already the provocative demonstration of last weekend has been described. A woman member of the EDL got detached from her company and was assaulted not by someone from a different faith but by a totally apolitical ruffian of the borough. He went for her. She was rescued by stewards of the Muslim forum for Europe, who threw a cordon around her and escorted her politely to the Underground station. It is a wonderful vignette of community relations in Tower Hamlets, which, like Luton, sometimes gets a very bad press.

It seems to me that often we have a suggestion that members of certain faith communities are hostile to what are called western values such as freedom and tolerance. In my experience, it is not so much that there is a hatred of our values, but people are appalled by a vacuum of values and an absence of moral true north of the kind visible on our streets in August. That is where there can be a useful partnership between government and faith communities. It is clearly desirable that there should be religious literacy at all levels of government, not least in local authorities, with the capacity to distinguish self-appointed community leaders from people with real followership and commitment to the common good.

I pay tribute to the work that has already been done by government thinking and planning on social cohesion in this area. I am grateful in particular for the Near Neighbours programme, which recognises the positive capacity of churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and temples to engage with one another across confessional boundaries, and to build alliances in the interests of the common good. I believe that we are in a new world.