Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Henley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I move Amendment 189 not with the purpose of having a lengthy debate on scrap metal theft and the move towards a cashless transaction regime tonight, but in order to give the Minister the opportunity to explain to the Committee what the Government intend to do with this issue at Report. If it is the Government's intention on Report to move their own amendment on becoming cashless, I shall seek the leave of the Committee to withdraw the amendment later. I thank the other noble Lords who have signed this amendment: the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, whose perseverance and endurance I pay tribute to by seeing him in his place here this evening.

This is a very important issue. It is part of a package of measures which I hope that the Government are going to take on board in relation to the epidemic of scrap metal theft. It may be that tonight the Minister could also say something about what the Government intend to do about powers of entry and closure of premises where there is suspicion that they contain stolen metal. If, in addition to that, he can also confirm that the Government are intending to bring forward substantive legislation in the new Session to update the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964, my cup genuinely will runneth over. I beg to move.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for introducing this amendment to highlight this important issue? Like him, I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate for his perseverance in staying here at this late hour for this matter. The right reverend Prelate was one of the earliest who came to see me to highlight this issue, particularly as it related to churches. However, as so many have said before, it is not just the churches, but it is the power companies, the transport companies and so many others. I do not want to go through the wide range of people who have been affected by it.

The noble Lord will be aware that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced on 26 January that the Government would be bringing forward amendments in the Bill to strengthen the law in this area. I repeated this as a Written Ministerial Statement in this House. In that Written Statement, my right honourable friend indicated that the government amendments would create a new criminal offence to prohibit cash payments to purchase scrap metal and significantly increase the fines for offences under the existing Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 which regulates that industry. This forms part of a coherent package of measures that we are taking to tackle metal theft. We aim to deter both thieves and metal dealers through more focused enforcement and tougher penalties. We will cut out the reward for metal thieves by banning cash payments for scrap metal and reducing the incentives for dealers to trade in stolen metals by developing a more rigorous licensing regime. These amendments are but a first step, albeit an important one. I underline that to the noble Lord.

Obviously, I welcome the support of the noble Lord and while I am sure that he is going to withdraw his amendment, he asked a crucial question about powers of entry and what we should do there. There are problems. As the noble Lord knows, Section 6(1) of the 1964 Act—an Act that he and I have both described on various occasions as being past its sell-by date—already provides police with a power of entry to premises registered as a scrap metal dealers under that Act. Section 6(2) further provides a power of entry to any officer of the local authority duly authorised in writing to enter a place for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is being used as a scrap metal store and, as such, officers of the local authority have a power of entry to premises not registered under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act.

It is intended that the national metal theft task force will visit every single registered and unregistered scrap metal yard in the course of its routine business. One element of that visit will be to ensure registration under the 1964 Act. As such, we expect that the number of scrap metal dealers that are not registered under the Act, and consequently where the police do not have the power of entry, will be greatly reduced. In addition, we are actively looking into the option of widening police powers as part of our amendments. If that is something that we can deal with later on Report, we will do so.

I hope that, with those assurances about what we are definitely going to do and what we hope to do if we see a way to do it, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment. I want to make clear to him, though, that we have a coherent package, we want to get ahead of this and we want to look at further amendments to the 1964 Act in due course. I hope that we can get, as I put it, a coherent package that we can bring before the House.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister. I pay tribute to him for the way in which he has dealt with me so courteously since I first tabled this amendment immediately after Second Reading, which seems to be a very long time ago now. He has done exactly what he said on that occasion and has given the undertaking that on Report the Government will table an amendment on cashless payments. He has also given us some hope on entry to premises.

I hope that the Government will find time for this in the next Session, will not be deflected from unnecessary legislation that clogs up this House and will deal with something really important: the problem of scrap metal theft. On the basis of the assurances that the Minister has given today, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.