Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who is already beginning to apply his forensic skills to the Bill. It is a great pleasure to welcome the Bill and to join so many others around the House who have already given it their support. Private Members’ Bills are often precarious little craft. The whole House has expressed its pleasure in knowing that this Bill is in such a safe and experienced pair of hands as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. The way she introduced it demonstrated her complete grasp of the issues. It will be a pleasure to engage with the Bill as it goes—I hope very swiftly—through the House. It is very good to know that it has the support of the Government. It can do nothing but bring credit to them. The fact that it has the support of the scrap industry is also extremely significant. Clearly it meets the industry’s aspirations to be seen as reputable and determined to outlaw rogue traders. That is extremely encouraging.

My reason for supporting the Bill is obvious. I declare an interest as the chair of English Heritage. We have been very concerned for a long time about metal theft. We have taken active steps to protect the very precious heritage that is put at risk by the very wicked activity of metal thieves. We very much welcome the Bill as a beneficiary of what it will do rather than as a body that will be directly concerned with its operation. At first sight it may seem an unglamorous Bill, but often the best legislation that has the greatest impact is not glamorous. Both in the House today and at the excellent Second Reading debate in the House of Commons, many examples were given of the way in which metal theft creates private grief and impacts on public safety, of the failure of existing regulation to prevent it, of the timeliness of the Bill and of the complete chaos that exists around the identities of traders, record-keeping, transactions and tax. I hope that the Bill will address those issues.

We are talking about scrap metal, but the title of the Bill is something of a misnomer because these metals are very precious, for example because of the churches they protect. We very much welcome the words of the right reverend Prelate. English Heritage has been very proud in recent years to work with the Church of England and to do what it can. The metals are precious because of the names of our war heroes that are etched in their surfaces, and perhaps because of the extraordinary art and craftsmanship that their form displays. We are dealing with metal that has a value far beyond its market price and which reflects much of our history.

In recent years, all of that has proved vulnerable in a way that we could not have predicted. Like many other noble Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner. I am glad to hear that the task force has had such an impact, and I join him in hoping that that will continue. Metal theft is a relatively new threat to our heritage, which we are now addressing. The Bill is an act of public service and we welcome it. I shall not address the detail of the regulatory measures, but obviously we support the Bill because it will simply and effectively reduce the ease with which stolen metal can be converted into cash. We need prevention because the damage that is done is often irreversible. There is no cure.

We are not talking about a handful of distressing cases. As we heard, it is a large-scale problem. The crime is neither casual nor opportunistic, although there are such elements in the community that conducts these thefts. The operation is very sophisticated and well organised. It is driven by a market in metals that has shot up in recent years because it is very hard to control demand. Our research shows that last year 6% of all listed buildings were harmed by metal theft. That means around 22,000 of our nationally important, historic buildings suffer damage every year from metal theft. With that rate of attrition every year, we are looking at a potential catastrophe if it continues—a real danger that this generation will fail in its duty to protect our fabulously rich heritage.

The right reverend Prelate gave some very graphic illustrations of the impact of this crime. It is no surprise that churches and war memorials are the most vulnerable and worst hit buildings. The church’s own inquiry into metal theft in 2011 reported a 33% increase year-on-year in the number of claims and the cost of the crime. The average cost of a metal theft is £27,000. However, insurance cover is often capped at £5,000 or £10,000, so even the richest congregation has a challenge on its hands. The noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, who cannot be in his place today, urged me to speak about Wales as well, which I will do with great pleasure. He drew attention to the situation in Wales, where the church has to look after 1,400 churches and where in the past five years it has paid out £300,000 on 90 insurance claims. Again, the insurance did not cover the costs. He referred to a particularly distressing case involving the theft of dozens of brass plates from a garden of rest. It is really hard to contemplate the nature of the people who commit these sorts of crimes. Our own research suggested that 14% of churches suffered metal theft in 2011 and Ecclesiastical Insurance says it has received 9,000 claims, worth £25 million, for churches in the past four years alone..

As we all agree, reeling off statistics hardly gives an idea of the real distress and damage caused to the confidence of small congregations who try their best with overwhelming problems and face yet another—maybe a third or fourth—attempt on the church roof. I have seen many sad cases in recent years. Most recently, I was in Yorkshire. I am sorry that the noble Lord from Yorkshire has left his place, because I was going to tell him how wonderful Yorkshire is, although I did not particularly want to join that debate. I was at St John’s Church at Birkby, near Huddersfield, where an extraordinary thing had happened. The thieves attached the end of the copper lightning conductor to a rope that was fixed to their getaway vehicle and they drove it away from the building. The lightning conductor was pulled away, but it brought down with it the top half of the steeple, which then crashed through the roof of the church. I leave you to imagine how the congregation is coping—and the cost, anxiety and frustration of it. The danger does not need to be described.

As for war memorials, it is absolutely impossible without quickly getting very angry to contemplate the contrast between the sacrifice of those whose names are inscribed and who died for the freedoms of this country and the callousness of the thieves. As we approach the centenary of the First World War, we are becoming more sensitive to the need to remember and record that debt. The legislation will provide a proper regulatory framework that will identify the decent traders and protect them but, as other noble Lords have said, it is not the only answer. I am pleased to say that we in English Heritage have been dealing with heritage crime of different sorts for a long time. We have received a fantastic response from the police and the other partners we have engaged with in our heritage crime programme. We have our own policeman in English Heritage who leads this work for us. For the past few years we have been working not just with the Church of England but with police and local authorities all over England to improve crime prevention for historic places and ensure that the law enforcement matches the seriousness of the offences.

It is a perennial task, but it is bearing fruit. For example, we recently worked in partnership with Lincolnshire Police and the Church of England in bringing justice to a gang which admitted stealing lead from more than 20 churches across that county. That case, among many others, shows the industrial scale of the threat as well as the benefits of conservation and law enforcement professionals working together. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising the wider issues around the theft of historic fabrics. When flagstones, cobblestones and building materials go, the character of the neighbourhood goes into a rapid decline. It is totally demoralising. These materials are vital.

The Bill is a significant step forward and I am cheering it on heartily, but I ask the Government, local authorities and the police and crime commissioners in particular to complete the task and really aid us in this, and ensure that heritage crime is embedded in all relevant law enforcement activities, as it should be. We are pleased that Chief Constable Andrew Bliss of Hertfordshire Police has agreed to be the national lead for heritage crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers. I know that he views this as a matter of great importance. I am grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, as Ministers, for giving a lead to the police on this. I will shortly write to police and crime commissioners to bring these issues to their attention and direct them to the help that English Heritage can give through the programme that we have devised.

In conclusion, I do not want to repeat anything that has been said, although it is clearly the case that metal theft does serious and rapid damage to public safety and to so much else in the country. It attacks the places where we should be able to see investment and economic life flourishing. When one drives out crime, one drives in investment, which is a wider story. I am confident that the Bill will have a swift and successful passage through the House. There is so much support for it and I can assure the noble Baroness that I will assist her in every way that I can.