Metal Theft

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) on securing this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Chris Kelly) said, this is an important debate because metal theft has been growing exponentially over the past several years. This issue is a national concern and also affects individuals and communities. I cannot believe that any of the UK’s 650 constituencies has not been affected in one way or another by the blight of metal theft.

In 2011 in Crawley constituency there were 108 reported incidents of metal theft. However, the police tell me that that is, in fact, only a small fraction of the total number of such thefts, and I am sure they are right. There has been a range of different types of metal theft in my constituency, as I am sure is also the case throughout the country. In my constituency, eight schools and three churches had lead taken from their roofs in the last year. Such crimes are often only discovered when it rains several days later and the buildings concerned suffer a great deal of structural damage. Other types of theft include thefts of catalytic converters from garages and thefts from domestic dwellings.

I pay tribute to my local police. Chief Inspector Steve Curry is in charge of Crawley police station, on behalf of Sussex police. He has done a phenomenal job over the last year in reducing crime in my constituency. Dwelling burglaries have fallen by 25.8% over the last year, for instance. Unfortunately however, non-dwelling theft has increased by 25.7%, and much of that has been metal theft.

Metal theft has a massive effect on the UK economy. Many of my constituents commute to London every day, and, sadly, it is not uncommon for the theft of cable, often miles away, to result in trains grinding to a halt across London and the south-east. I am not fishing for sympathy, but I have suffered from that myself. On a day when I was planning to get to Parliament very early as I had an early question on the Order Paper, I almost did not arrive on time.

The cost of these thefts to our economy runs to many tens of millions of pounds, and I congratulate the Government both on their £5 million investment in the taskforce to tackle this problem and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) said, on introducing amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. The Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 was written for a “Steptoe and Son” age. I therefore greatly welcome the Government’s commitment to updating it for the sake of our constituents, the country and the economy.