Rural Crime and Public Services

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) for introducing this debate, the subject of which is important to me and my constituents. In fact, I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rural crime. Coincidentally, we had a meeting last night at which we discussed a number of topics, such as the theft of heating oil and diesel, the benefit of drones—drones have already saved lives in Lincolnshire and elsewhere—the use of WhatsApp groups in policing rural areas, the theft of rural machinery, the fear of isolation among those living in isolated areas, and the National Police Chiefs Council rural and wildlife crime strategies, as described by the Minister. I invite Opposition Members, as well as any more Conservative Members who wish to join, to come along and join our APPG so we can tackle rural crime together.

One of the main areas of discussion yesterday evening was hare coursing, a cruel crime in which lurcher-style dogs chase after a hare. Often there are bets on which dog will catch the hare first, as part of which gangs of mostly men in 4x4s and other heavy vehicles traipse across farmers’ land in pursuit of the animals to make sure they see which dog catches the hare in order to secure the bet.

Hare coursing is a disgusting crime, and it has a huge impact on farmers that is not well understood. Some who see the tyre tracks going across fields and the torn up crops might not think it important, but it is important. The farmer has invested in those crops, which they have nurtured to provide that year’s income for their family. The crime is essentially the same as going into John Lewis, or a similar store, on Oxford Street and destroying every item of merchandise, and then preventing the shop from restocking for the next 12 months. This is a serious crime, which has a huge impact economically and on a farmer’s lifestyle. I should mention at this point that although I have not been a victim of hare coursing crime, my husband is a farmer.

Hare coursing is not just a criminal pastime, but a pastime of criminals. One thing Lincolnshire’s police and crime commissioner has made clear to me is that the vast majority of the people the police catch for this crime come not from Lincolnshire, but from elsewhere. They have come across county lines to commit crime in Lincolnshire, perhaps because they feel it gives them the best chance of not being caught. It is fear of being caught that will stop them doing these things.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

There is hope, because our PCC is making huge strides by using drones. It is important in these debates that we are not miserable the whole time. There are technological ways in which we can combat crime with great success.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is right, and I shall come on to discuss that shortly.

The crime of hare coursing also involves a fear of violence, because when farmers catch these people many of them threaten the farmer with violence then and there. Sometimes when the crime is reported to the police the farmer is threatened with having their sheds burned down. In some cases pets or livestock have been injured deliberately to try to frighten farmers into not reporting the crime or not pursuing a prosecution for it. Once prosecution occurs, we encounter an issue with sentencing, as it does not reflect the severity of this crime, with an average fine of £250.

[Mr John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making a vigorous and effective case on hare coursing in Lincolnshire. She knows that our PCC, Marc Jones, and our chief constable, Will Skelly, have done pioneering work to counter this activity, with good effect. Will she join me in asking those on the Treasury Bench to examine the whole matter of sentencing, as there is a good case for having a specific offence related to hare coursing, so that once the police do their job, the courts will back them up and encourage them to do still more?

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that important intervention. He rightly says that the fines are not proportionate, and indeed our next all-party group meeting will be with the Solicitor General to discuss the impacts of sentencing on rural crime. The dogs themselves can be worth very much more than £250 and some of the bets are for £10,000 or more. My right hon. Friend makes reference to Operation Galileo, a Lincolnshire police initiative masterminded by Bill Skelly and Marc Jones, our Conservative PCC. It has had great success in Lincolnshire, with the number of incidents having gone down from 2,000 to 1,400. The police credit that 600 fall to two initiatives, the first of which is the institution of criminal behaviour orders, whereby people convicted of hare coursing are no longer allowed to be in a vehicle and in possession of a lurcher-style dog, or in the company of others with such an animal, in Lincolnshire. However, Lincolnshire police can catch these people but they can then go to Cambridgeshire or North Yorkshire to do the same thing. I therefore ask the Minister to consider the possibility of allowing courts to impose such an order covering a wider geographical area, so that the Cambridgeshire police do not then have to catch these people, then the North Yorkshire police have to do the same, and so on. These orders could apply in other areas as soon as someone has been caught once.

The main initiative that has brought about the success is the seizing of dogs, because, as I say, the dog is what is valuable to these criminals. Taking the dog from them means they are not able to pursue their crime; these dogs are trained to do what they are doing. Tackling the crime is expensive; we have seen the crime fall in Lincolnshire, but I understand from our PCC that dog kennelling fees have cost £46,000 this year. There is currently no provision in law to reclaim that money from the criminal once they have been prosecuted, so I ask the Minister to consider whether he can add a clause into law that would allow the kennelling fees to be reclaimed from the criminal after their conviction. That would be only fair and reasonable.

In her opening speech, the Minister mentioned that there was no definition of rural crime, but police tell me that intelligence and evidence-based policing is hampered by the fact that they do not have some of the data that they need. I therefore ask her to consider better and more detailed recording of crime—heating oil theft and hare coursing are not always specifically recorded—so that we can identify where these crimes are taking place and target them much more effectively.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) mentioned fear. Nobody should experience fear in their own home. People have a right to feel safe as well as to be safe. In an isolated setting, however, it is perhaps understandable that people do not always feel that way. If a person is attacked in their flat, or if someone comes into their home, or they feel unsafe, they can scream, run outside and seek help relatively quickly. If someone is in an isolated rural farmhouse, more than a mile from the nearest property, it is understandable that the response time from the police and from any member of the public will be much slower. That would leave them feeling much more isolated.

I have great admiration for the work of Lincolnshire police, especially the way that they police a large geographical area, with 6,000 miles of road and a widely dispersed population. It is a credit to them that our crime level is among the lowest in the entire country, but money is an issue. Lincolnshire police has one of the lowest levels of funding in the country. I understand the point that there is only so much money and that it has to be shared out somehow, but we receive the least amount of funding for a service that is more difficult and more expensive to deliver because of the area that the police have to cover. Moreover, a particularly high proportion of our money is funded locally. I agree with my hon. Friends who have said that it is reasonable for some of the money to come from local sources as it is directed back locally, and for some of it to come from central Government grant. However, at the moment, there are areas of the country, particularly urban areas, where the local population is being asked to contribute around 25% of the money that is used for the overall policing budget in their area, and yet in Lincolnshire, it is 43%, and I understand that in North Yorkshire it is closer to 50%. We need greater fairness. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking into how we can make police funding much fairer in the future, and I will be happy to support them in doing so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

It is vital, as we have heard from colleagues across the House, that we tackle the challenge of crime in rural communities. My constituency is unusual on Teesside in that it is the only one with a significant rural element, in the shape of rural East Cleveland. At my rural club, I have heard eloquent testimony from local farmers and people who run rural businesses on issues such as hare coursing, theft, trespass, and the production of drugs on isolated patches of farmland. There is a very serious problem. Perhaps it does not attract some of the media attention that urban crime, particularly crime in the capital, receives, but that does not mean that it is not very serious.

For example, in the coastal town of Saltburn at Easter, there was a real wave of antisocial behaviour. The Coco & Rum restaurant was attacked. A gang of youths was gathering around the local Sainsbury’s, drawn there by the wi-fi signal. Saltburn may not be a rural community, but it is a coastal community, so it falls into the category of somewhere that is quite difficult to police.

Good local policing makes a huge difference in cracking down on all these problems. I pay great tribute to the work of the Guisborough neighbourhood policing team, who are the main focus of policing in East Cleveland. Led by Inspector Fay Cole, they do a really fantastic job. They do not have large numbers of people. They have a very large area to police—it profiles as somewhere with many of the features of an urban community, just spread out in a more disparate fashion. They do a brilliant job. At the Skelton McDonald’s during the recess, I heard directly from the people there how grateful they were for the work of the local constabulary in cracking down on problems they had had with antisocial behaviour. So it can be done. Considering the resources that are available, the team do an outstanding job.

That brings me to the issue of resources. I will concede that there is funding pressure on our police. That would be my No. 1 priority for additional investment as our national finances stabilise, and I welcome the comments made by the Home Secretary in his Andrew Marr interview at the weekend. However, I find it well-nigh unbelievable that Labour Members show such collective amnesia as to why we are in the current situation regarding our public finances. The ruinous state that we inherited in 2010, which they—[Interruption.] They look down. They look at their phones. They look anywhere other than at the truth of the matter, which is—[Interruption.] The truth of the matter is that it was a shambolic situation, and we are still paying the price for it now. Were they to have the opportunity to put into practice some of the policies that they boast about now, we would very quickly return to that state of affairs.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My hon. Friend is giving an important speech and making his point very well. Is it not right that the cost of the interest we are paying on the debt created by the Labour Government is roughly equivalent to the current policing budget? Had they not created such huge levels of debt, would we not be able to provide a much better service?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend is completely right. The Opposition may deny it because it is fundamentally inconvenient to them.