Rural Crime

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ben Maguire]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that type of rural crime. We have become far too much of a soft touch for these organised criminal gangs.

If we want to tackle crime in this country, we must finally start taking rural crime seriously. The latest figures from NFU Mutual put the total cost of rural crime in 2023 at £52.8 million—an increase of 4.3% on the year before. But those figures only reflect insured losses, and the true cost is likely far higher, as many people do not have trust or confidence that crimes will be properly investigated when reported.

The explosion in thefts of high-value equipment is particularly worrying. GPS theft surged by 137% last year, costing £4.2 million, and farmers cannot simply replace the equipment overnight. Thefts of quad bikes and all-terrain vehicles, which are critical equipment for farmers and rural workers, rose by 9% to £3.2 million. Livestock theft remained at an alarming £2.7 million, with evidence of animals being butchered in the fields and then stolen, causing immense distress to farmers.

Farmers—who faced botched Brexit trade deals thanks to the Conservatives, and who now face a family farm tax because of this Labour Government’s changes to agricultural property relief—are suffering from the scourge of rural organised crime, which is often theft to order. The toll on farmers’ mental health and wellbeing is enormous, and my inbox has been inundated with cases from North Cornwall. One farmer saw his £17,000 all- terrain vehicle stolen in the dead of night, and that was not the first time thieves had targeted his property. Another farmer, in the village of St Kew, lost more than £3,000 in the blink of an eye when thieves broke in and stole vehicles, tools and equipment that he relied on for his livelihood. Finally, one farming couple in Blisland had two quad bikes taken from their locked garage, costing £15,000 to replace. With this particular theft, police travelled all the way from Totnes—a three-hour round trip—showing up three days after the event. They put a few signs around the property, and the farmers have not heard from them since. Those stories make it unsurprising that 86% of countryside residents have said rural crime is negatively impacting their mental wellbeing, as highlighted by various surveys conducted by the NFU.

Yet, one of the most under-reported aspects of rural crime is the mass theft of power tools and machinery from tradesmen and small businesses—a crime that exceeds farm machinery theft in total volume. The figures are staggering. Of the over 3,600 stolen tools recovered by the national rural crime unit, only 77 were successfully returned to their owners. That is just 2%, which is an abysmal rate of return, with a huge impact on the livelihoods of these tradesmen. These thefts can devastate builders, carpenters, plumbers and others who rely on expensive, specialised equipment to earn a living. When tools are stolen, jobs are lost, deadlines are missed and insurance costs soar. Yet, some manufacturers outright refuse to co-operate with crime prevention efforts, as there is currently no legal requirement for forensic markings or GPS tracking on these high-value power tools to help with their recovery.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may be aware that a private Member’s Bill I brought forward in the last Parliament—it is now the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023—would enable us to place that requirement on power tool manufacturers to fit forensic marking; it just requires secondary legislation. The Bill was discussed at all stages of debate during its passage through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, so will the hon. Gentleman support my calls from back then, and on the new Government now, to look at bringing in that secondary legislation to make the Act apply equally to power tools?

[Ben Maguire]

Along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, I certainly do support that change, and I will discuss it slightly later in my speech.

The trust that our rural communities have in police forces to solve these crimes is shockingly low, with two thirds of respondents to one survey saying that reporting rural crime is a total “waste of time” as they know it will go unsolved. The Government could reopen some of the smaller police stations in rural areas, such as that in Launceston in my constituency, so that these crimes can be reported and dealt with by the front desks, which would certainly be a start in regaining the public’s trust and confidence,

As the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) just mentioned, Parliament passed the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act in July 2023, with the aim of deterring thefts of farm vehicles by requiring immobilisers and registration databases. The Act was a clear step forward, but unfortunately it did not do quite enough to tackle the true scale of the problem, as it does not cover GPS units, power tools or smaller, high-value pieces of equipment, which are among the most frequently stolen items. Will the Government consider the merits of extending that legislation to ensure that all GPS systems, power tools, and pieces of high-value rural equipment are required to have forensic markings and registration databases?

[Greg Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Ben Maguire]

I am going to carry on for a moment.

Without proper enforcement and action, we are leaving the van door wide open for thieves. While rural crime grows, police forces remain underfunded, overstretched and lacking the specialist knowledge needed to combat these offences. In many cases, local police do not have the resources, staff or capability to track and recover farm equipment and power tools at the rate at which they are stolen. These crimes are committed across wide areas and are often too small to warrant the attention of large-scale organisations such as the National Crime Agency but too big for individual forces to deal with on their own.

That is where the national rural crime unit comes in. The unit is a vital national co-ordination centre, and does excellent work in the recovery of stolen property, sharing intelligence across forces and disrupting these organised criminal gangs. Shockingly, the national rural crime unit is set to lose its single national crime co-ordinator this year due to a lack of funding. That role has been essential in tackling cross-border rural crime, linking intelligence between forces and co-ordinating national efforts to combat criminal gangs. However, without continued funding, that vital work will collapse.

Furthermore, the NRCU is entirely industry-funded, yet as it stands the Government take 50% of all cash assets seized from criminal gangs, which cannot be returned to the victims. That 50% could instead go directly back into fighting the criminal gangs, and supporting the work of organisations such as the NRCU. I ask the Minister to commit to providing long-term funding for the NRCU to allow it to continue its critical work and deliver greater co-ordination between local forces to tackle rural crime. As it stands, the Government are relying on the insurance industry to fund rural crime policing, and my constituents and I view that as unacceptable.

County line drug gangs have increasingly infiltrated Cornwall and other rural areas across the country, exploiting vulnerable individuals, including children, to traffic and sell drugs across the region. In Bodmin, for instance, gangs took over the homes of vulnerable residents—a practice known commonly as cuckooing—to establish bases for their illicit operations. These gangs operate across vast rural areas and often in sparsely populated towns and villages, and proper resourcing is required to ensure that they are properly policed.

The costs of rural crime extend beyond humans, often harming our natural environment and the animals that live in it. Illegal snaring, hare coursing, poaching and other criminal activity have decimated and traumatised wildlife populations in North Cornwall and across the country. That is not to mention the huge problem of fly-tipping, which comes up time and again from my constituents, with rubbish being illegally dumped in our towns and across our countryside. To combat that issue specifically, the Government could consider a single reporting mechanism for fly-tipping, so that landowners and farmers need report an incident only once and will have the confidence that it will be followed up on.

Despite facing unique challenges, rural police forces such as Devon and Cornwall police continue to receive some of the lowest funding per head in England. In Cornwall alone, the population swells by over 3 million during the summer months, placing enormous strain on an already overstretched police force. Meanwhile, the police and crime commissioner for the region costs around £1.5 million a year, factoring in expenses and office costs. That money could instead go directly into funding into rural crime teams—officers on the beat, instead of office administrators.

Furthermore, more than a third of officers in Devon and Cornwall have less than three years of service, due to difficulties in retention and recruitment caused by chronic underfunding over many years. Despite those clear pressures, the Government have failed to reform the funding model to reflect real-world policing demand in our rural communities. Policing should not be a postcode lottery, where the most in need are often the least supported.

On all these issues, we still seem to have no clear Government strategy to tackle rural crime. We do not appear to have national co-ordination, proper funding structures or a commitment to equipping rural police teams with the resources they so crucially need. The Government could look to organisations such as the Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime, which has had an official rural crime strategy in place since 2019. That strategy focuses on gathering intelligence and raising people’s confidence in reporting crimes to the local authorities. As a result, the cost of rural crime in Scotland reduced by £2 million, from £5.6 million to £3.6 million in just one year.

The rural crime team established within the Lancashire police force is also proving to be an excellent example of a specialised rural crime unit. One resident served by their work said that the police

“just showing their faces around here has had a massive impact on rural crime for us”

and that it had even led to a “massive decrease” in fly-tipping. That is why, on 14 January, I introduced the Rural Crime (Strategy) Bill, which would require the Home Secretary to establish an independent taskforce to develop and implement a comprehensive rural crime strategy. The taskforce must bring together stakeholders from across industry, police and rural communities to advise the Government, ultimately leading to a strategy that could take vital steps such as ensuring that properly funded dedicated rural crime teams or specialists are embedded in police forces—currently, less than 1% of police officers are assigned to rural crime—providing training for police and 999 control room staff on how to tackle rural crime, and improving intelligence sharing among the different forces.

Rural crime is a serious, organised and devastating issue for our countryside communities. It is time for a cohesive national strategy that puts an end to the chaos of underfunded police forces and unco-ordinated responses and that gives teeth to legislation to tackle these problems. Organised crime is thriving, and the Government need to act now, starting with bringing forward a comprehensive rural crime strategy, because our rural communities deserve so much better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire) on securing this debate. While I will talk about the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023 in more detail later in my remarks, I assure him, because of the comments that he made, that GPS units were very much intended to be included within the scope of that Act; they were spoken about extensively at all stages of debate before the Act achieved Royal Assent. I urge the Minister to have that in mind as she prepares the necessary statutory instruments to fully bring the Act into force. I believe that has now been promised to come by this summer.

Fundamentally, rural crime is devastating to all rural areas, not least those such as mine in Mid Buckinghamshire, where the economy is mostly agricultural and entire communities are centred around farming and the local economy that farming supports. Whether it is theft, hare coursing, fly-tipping or antisocial behaviour—to name just a few such crimes—the countryside is too often an easy target for criminal gangs looking to make a quick buck. It is imperative that the Government recognise that and take steps to build on the work that we did in government, particularly over the last few years, to tackle and prevent rural crime.

According to the Countryside Alliance’s 2023 rural crime survey, fly-tipping accounted for the most commonly reported crime—to the point made by the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna)—at 37% of cases, followed closely by agricultural machinery theft at 32% and trespassing at 31%. It goes without saying that farm machinery is essential to the smooth running of farms. Those items are not just tools; they are the backbone of the entire agricultural machine. Whether it is a combine harvester, a tractor, or a high-tech bit of equipment, the cost of replacing them can run into tens of thousands of pounds.

In 2022 alone, rural crime cost UK farmers over £50 million, with farm machinery theft accounting for a substantial portion of that. NFU Mutual—which, let’s face it, insures the vast majority of agricultural machinery in this country—estimates that the cost of rural crime increased by 4.3% year on year in 2023 to £52.8 million, and the cost of GPS theft alone reached an estimated £4.2 million in 2023, which was a 137% increase. Quad bike and all-terrain vehicle theft cost an estimated £3.2 million in 2023—up 9% on 2022. It is not just heavy machinery and equipment that is targeted. Often it is fuel, which is all too easy for organised gangs to simply siphon off and load into a van, then off they go, leaving victims with huge losses and hefty bills to restock.

Last year I visited a farm in my constituency that is directly opposite Chequers. It seems like an unlikely place for opportunist thefts to happen—opposite one of the most heavily armed and secure premises in my constituency—but the farmers fell victim to the loss of some 2,000 litres of red diesel that was siphoned off and taken away in the night. That particular farm operates a very good farm shop, and the thieves also got away with two chest freezers full of meat destined for it. That has not just a huge financial impact on those farmers and that business; there is an equally huge toll on business owners’ and farmers’ mental health, as the hon. Member for North Cornwall referenced.

These criminal gangs are incredibly difficult to apprehend when operating across county lines, and the raids can often take several hours and go on through the night, with criminals targeting several farms and heading off great distances with the stolen items. Some are even shipped overseas and sold without any traceability. The ever-evolving nature and sophistication of criminal gangs makes this a severe uphill battle, but it is a battle that, I would put to this House and to the Minister, this country can win. We can defeat these gangs.

The Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act, which was my private Member’s Bill, requires retailers to register ATV sales and to ensure that vehicles are fitted with unique identifiers in the form of forensic marking. That will help police forces to track those that fall into the wrong hands. The use of GPS trackers and forensic marking on machinery is already helping farmers who voluntarily fit them to their equipment to ensure that stolen items can be recovered; where voluntarily applied, law enforcement agencies have followed leads and caught criminals before they could profit from their crimes.

Given that my Bill achieved Royal Assent in 2023, I was hopeful that the secondary legislation would have been passed before the general election was called last year, or quickly after it. That was not to be, but I am assured from commitments made in the main Chamber that those pieces of secondary legislation are coming. I would be grateful if the Minister could reconfirm in her speech that the summer is still the intended point of arrival for them, so that we can debate the regulations in a Delegated Legislation Committee.

Another common-sense piece of legislation passed under the last Government was the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which increased the maximum sentence for hare coursing from a fine to six months in prison. It is not just the legislation that is making a difference; it is the commitment of local law enforcement. In Buckinghamshire, Thames Valley police has been working tirelessly to track down and apprehend those responsible for thefts and other rural crime.

Increased patrols, better surveillance systems, and collaboration with local farmers and rural communities have contributed to a drop in farm machinery theft in areas where such initiatives have been rolled out. I argue that, with the support of the Thames Valley police and crime commissioner, Matthew Barber, Thames Valley police is leading the way, with a commitment in the 2024-25 policing budget for an uplift in officers to tackle rural crime—in fact, a doubling of Thames Valley’s rural crime taskforce.

The national rural crime unit has been mentioned in this debate. Thames Valley’s rural crime taskforce, led by Stuart Hutchings, has been a trailblazer feeding into that. Launched in March 2022, the taskforce has made a huge impact. It has already seized more than £5 million-worth of property including vehicles, drugs, plant machinery and tools, as well as completing hundreds of investigations and supporting hundreds of people with crime prevention advice. I pay particular tribute to the national rural crime unit, led by Superintendent Andy Huddleston, who was instrumental in helping to put my Bill together and who I very much value as a friend and someone I look to for sage advice. The unit has recovered stolen property, including agricultural machinery and vehicles, worth £10 million since 2023. It has co-ordinated operational responses across the UK that have resulted in multiple arrests, as well as disrupting organised crime groups. The national construction and agriculture theft team, which sits under the NRCU, seized £3.1 million-worth of stolen vehicles and machinery in 2023 alone.

Even in the last few weeks, this co-ordinated approach, started by the last Government and hopefully continued by this one, has produced significant results. Following a series of hare coursing and associated antisocial behaviour incidents across the south-east and east of England, key arrests were made by Cambridgeshire police with support from Thames Valley police. This reinforces the effectiveness of intelligence sharing and co-ordination between forces that makes entire regions and the whole country safer by stopping these gangs operating.

To conclude, rural communities in Buckinghamshire and the whole country deserve the same level of protection as urban areas. We must ensure that our hard-working farmers are able to focus on what they do best— feeding the nation—without the looming threat of theft, intimidation or criminal damage hanging over their heads. I urge the Minister to ensure that the good words that have been said about fighting rural crime under this Government so far are turned into a solid reality that will protect rural communities—my own and all others across the country—in the coming months and years.