Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Hogan-Howe

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

Before the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, sits down, can he address an issue that none of us has addressed yet? These amendments concern the state’s use of facial recognition, for all the reasons that we have talked about. But the private sector is far in advance of this. Some 12 or 13 years ago, it was using a product called Facewatch, which was started at Gordon’s Wine Bar because Gordon was sick of people walking into the bar and either violently assaulting his patrons or stealing things. He put a clever camera on the door and patrons did not get into the bar if they had been accused of something in the past. That product has moved right around the world, and certainly it is extensively used in the UK in different settings.

I am not arguing that that is good or bad; I merely observe that, if we end up in a position where the police have less access to something that can be a good technology, and private commerce is getting benefits that presumably it is able to justify, that inequality of arms does not benefit anyone. It should at least be considered in the consultation that the Government started, which is particularly focused on the police. But as well as the police, we should consider airports, railway stations, et cetera.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

Very briefly, I do not think that the noble Lord is making a bad case at all. Live facial recognition, whether in the hands of the public sector or the private sector, needs a proper legal framework: there is no doubt about that. My noble friend made it clear that we believe it is a useful technology, but, the more useful it is, the more we need to make sure that it is under proper control.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Hogan-Howe

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendments 366 and 538, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and introduced so cogently by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I thank her for the reference to my honourable friend Martin Wrigley, who helped to identify this particular issue, which addresses the growing problem of mobile phone and device theft, often fuelled by the profitability of reselling these stolen goods overseas.

We are currently facing an epidemic of mobile phone theft, as the noble Baroness said, with reports indicating that phone snatches have increased by as much as 150% in certain areas. Every single day, approximately 200 mobile phones are stolen across the country, with many being destined for a lucrative resale market abroad. These stolen devices remain valuable criminal assets, because, currently, they often can still be accessed or resold even after being reported.

We support Amendment 366 because it seeks to strike at the heart of this criminal profit model. The amendment would ensure that technology companies actively employ technical measures, specifically cloud-based blocking and IMEI-linked device locks, as the noble Baroness described, to deter the resale of stolen mobile phone devices. Without compulsory co-operation from cloud service providers and manufacturers, stolen data and devices will remain valuable criminal assets, even if the physical device is recovered. This is an essential step towards forcing technical solutions from technology companies to counter the incentives for theft.

Amendment 538 would provide the industry with a necessary and reasonable lead-in period, specifying that these cloud service access restrictions will come into force six months after the Act is passed. This would ensure that technology companies have the time required to implement the necessary technical standards and administrative processes.

For too long, the manufacturers and cloud providers have treated device theft as a secondary concern. It is time that they work in a much more customer-friendly manner, in the way that the noble Baroness described, and use their immense technical capabilities to simply turn these devices into mute bricks the moment they are stolen, thereby removing the incentive for the crime altogether. I very much hope that the Minister will accept these common-sense measures to protect our property and safety.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, ably explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I may cover some of the same ground—I was only grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, intervened, because people might have forgotten some of the points made, but if I amplify them too much I am sure that somebody will remind me. I was particularly keen to support the amendment because, in the past, I have criticised the police for a lack of enforcement and detection—but of course, they cannot do everything.

We know that organised crime, which I will come to later, is about money; it is just another form of business. Theft is driven by people trying to make a profit. The amendment is all about the commercial business of mobile phone sales—some of it legal but some of it criminal. Apparently, there are about 88 million mobile phones in this country. They can be about £1,000 each, so that is a market of about £88 billion or something of that order. It is a massive market. In 2023, the purchase of these devices totalled £5.8 billion, and there is another £2.5 billion-worth of services that they provide and that we all pay for, from data to the general use of a mobile phone. This, by any measure, is a massive business.

The value of the phones stolen, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned, was about £20 million, with a reinsurance value of £50 million. The number of phones stolen in the UK is about 120,000, with two-thirds of this happening in London. It is a big city, and there are an awful lot of targets for the criminals wandering about. As they leave the Tube, people take their phone out to get a signal, as we all want, and to check on the messages they have not received while they were on the Tube. That is where the criminals spot them, and they then follow them to a place where they relieve them of their phone. I suspect that is one reason why we see so much of this in London. Clearly, the business model works very well here.

These are the crimes that are reported. An awful lot of phones that are stolen are never reported. I have talked to people in this place who have not reported their phone as stolen because there has been a level of embarrassment about the fact that it has happened to them on the street—they have just got another phone. We only know about the bare minimum of the number of phones that have been stolen in the course of a year.

On many occasions, violence is used. Just the ripping of a phone from a hand can lead to somebody trying to hold on to it, and we never know where that contest might end. If somebody ends up on the floor, violence can follow and the physical consequences can be quite severe.

As far as the mobile phone industry is concerned, £20 million is a very small number compared to an £88 billion market. More importantly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, pointed out, the industry benefits, because when you have your phone stolen you go back to get another one. So why would it stop this? There is no financial incentive to actually do anything about it. There might be a moral one, but I am afraid it looks as though the moral incentive is not having an awful lot of effect. Of course, none of the manufacturers or the networks tries to lead in the market by saying that if their phone is stolen then it cannot be used. There is no market incentive for one manufacturer to say that its phone is better because it cannot be stolen, or, alternatively, that if it is stolen then it has no value. There is no effect on the market that is helping to prevent the theft of phones.

It is all to do with organised crime. There are some fancy definitions—one or two people in the Chamber may know of them—of organised crime and what is it all about. It is about money. It is about being organised enough to steal things in such a volume and have somebody to buy them which means that they have been worth stealing in the first place. The market they are involved in is enforced by violence. There is no monopolies commission supervision of this market, whether it be drugs or mobile phones; it is enforced by violence to ensure that they succeed and that other people fail. It is therefore really important that we get this right.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, the resale value of a mobile phone that has been stolen is about £300 to £400. The thief does not get £300 to £400, but, by the time it has gone through a few hands, that is the return that they are expecting. To pay everybody out, they need to get £300 to £400 to make sure that it works.

The problem is that 78% of the phones that are stolen are going abroad, as has been said, and we cannot seem to stop them at the border. This is not entirely surprising. Phones are very small items and some 90% of the world’s goods travel by sea, in containers. Without intelligence, the chance of finding mobile phones is very limited. Therefore, we are not able to physically stop the phones leaving the country and going to places such as Algeria and China. At the moment, the police are fighting a losing battle to catch the thieves, who are low down the organised crime chain, and trying to prevent the export of stolen phones. As I said, given the size of a phone, that is quite difficult: they are looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack.