Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Cope, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester for the opportunity to say a few words on this matter, and I commend him for the diligence with which he has pursued this matter over some years. I do not want to sound as though I am prejudging the Minister’s response before she has made it, so I will not yet accuse her of any complacency. However, the Government do not take this problem as seriously as they should, and I hope that when she comes to reply, she can ease some of my fears. Given the time constraints, I shall confine my remarks to the impact of metal theft on the railway industry, in which I spent my working life.

Fifty years ago I was a passenger guard, as it was known in those days, at Manchester Victoria. One of my first duties after I took over at that station was to work a train on the old Lancashire and Yorkshire main line from Liverpool Exchange via Wigan to Leeds. On the first day the train was 35 to 45 minutes late, as it was the whole week, due to the theft of signalling cables between Liverpool and Wigan. I tell that story not, I hope, to bore the Committee unduly, but to show that this problem is far from new. Moving to the present day, anyone who watches that excellent Channel 5 programme “Paddington Station 24/7” will know that metal theft, particularly from alongside the railway, still has an enormous impact 50 years on. I watched an episode the other night which detailed the theft of some signalling cabling in the Bristol area, which again caused hundreds of hours to be lost by thousands of passengers. Although there is nothing inherently unsafe so far as the railways are concerned, you have to plan contingency arrangements for when metal thefts take place. Obviously, it means that trains are enormously delayed and passengers massively inconvenienced.

I fear that the Minister will say in her reply that the 2013 Act is working perfectly adequately and there is no particular need to strengthen it. That view is not shared by other people in the industry. The British Metals Recycling Association, to which my noble friend referred in his speech, said in a statement at the end of last year:

“If Government was to reinstate the Metal Theft Taskforce, and use it to tackle cash-paying operators, it would quickly reduce the number of disposal outlets for stolen material”.


I hope the Minister can reflect on that and decide to reinstate that task force, which, in the opinion of many people in the scrap metal industry, was responsible for the dramatic fall in thefts following the passage of the Act in 2013. Of course, some in the industry say that that dramatic fall was caused not only by the activities of that task force but by the fall in commodity prices. As we are seeing commodity prices increase at present, it is conceivable—more than conceivable; it is very likely—that these thefts will rise in future.

It is all very well for Governments or local authorities to say that cash payments for scrap metal have been banned. However, on the fringes of this industry—which extend quite a way—it is possible to receive a cheque for stolen metal in a scrapyard and then be told where to take the cheque to exchange it for cash. Any legislation, as all of us who have served in either House of Parliament know, is only as good as its enforcement. Given local authorities’ lack of resources, I would be interested to know from the Minister just how many inspections have led to prosecutions over the past year or so, and whether instructions can be sent to local authorities to strengthen the operation or implementation of the Act and ensure that, whatever happens in future, there is an improvement in the number of people prosecuted for the sort of behaviour I have just outlined.

It is of course not just the British Metals Recycling Association that has expressed concern. I shall not repeat anything my noble friend has said, but one of the recommendations from the Chartered Institute of Waste Management, to which he did not refer, talks about creating a more rigorous local authority licensing regime to ensure transparency and consistency by harmonising renewals procedure, improving the application process and strengthening the requirements for local authorities to provide data. All these matters would go a long way to tackling this problem; I hope the Minister will take them seriously.

I end on one quote, from someone to whom my noble friend referred—Robin Edwards, the project lead of Operation Tornado, which had such an enormous and beneficial impact on metal thefts. He says:

“There is no silver bullet and without effective licensing, enforcement and greater controls from the owners of metal the problem is only going to go one way”.


I hope the Minister will agree that more needs to be done and that she can offer some hope and consolation that the Government take this problem far more seriously than they appear to have done so far.