Baroness Chakrabarti
Main Page: Baroness Chakrabarti (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Chakrabarti's debates with the Home Office
(3 years ago)
Lords ChamberI am very happy to convene a meeting, but I would say that the NICRP does share intelligence between forces and utility companies, which does help with crime prevention and investigation. It helps with information, good news and developing best practice. It manages a central industry and police intelligence database of metal theft, to track trends and to link crimes and intelligence on offenders. It also has a RAG rating database of scrap metal dealers—going back to the noble Lord’s point earlier—in order to focus enforcement on those known to be involved in crime.
My Lords, since when is self-financing by industry or any other victims of crime a constitutionally appropriate approach to the enforcement of the criminal law? I give the Minister another opportunity to answer the principal question: what additional funding will the Government provide for the enforcement of this crime that is costing hundreds of millions of pounds to our economy?
Seed-corn funding is generally pump-prime funding, which is then intended to be self-financing ongoing, and the agencies and organisations involved are actually supportive of this model of funding.