Railways: Theft

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 3rd October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for drawing that to our attention and for emphasising the problems that we and the church are facing. I know that he has been in touch with the Home Office and that Ministers have responded to the church’s concerns about these matters. He is quite right to draw attention to the advantage of the cashless model, but there are other matters that we could look at, such as design, material and even, I understand, reviewing the properties of the copper and lead themselves to see whether they can be made more traceable in due course.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is not only the railways and power transmission that are affected but telecoms cables? Is he also aware that a lot of these people just stuff the cables into containers and export them? Am I right in detecting a lack of urgency in the Government coming up with a solution, which could be very serious?

[Lord Henley]

I completely refute the idea that there is a lack of urgency. Only the day before my noble friend left the job that I am now in, she hosted a meeting of Ministers from a whole range of departments to look at the problems facing us and what we ought to do. However, I am grateful to the noble Lord for pointing out that an awful lot of this metal is not going to scrap metal dealers but going straight into containers and being exported. I have mentioned the role that the Environment Agency has to play in that, which we will look at.