Foreign Affairs Committee (Hong Kong Visit)

Debate between Robert Flello and Richard Ottaway

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I value his support on the Committee. We have approached this inquiry with an open mind, and I think the Chinese Government and the Hong Kong authorities are missing a real opportunity by declining to give evidence to us. Indeed they do not even recognise the Committee as they continue to call this a “so-called inquiry.”

Finally, Hong Kong is the largest stock market in China and its main financial services hub, supporting a fifth of the world’s population. It currently has free flows of money, goods and services. What sort of message does this send to future investors? This arbitrary action can only harm China’s reputation and financial interests in an increasingly global world. In Asia, a stable Singapore looks a much better place to do business at the moment.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I have been listening with great interest to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, which I think is absolutely spot-on. Does he agree that the Chinese are looking at this in the following way: “Well, there was all that fuss about Tibet and we just got on with it, and there was all that fuss about our appalling human rights record but we have just got on with it. So over time, this too, will all go away and we’ll continue to trade and be able to sell our goods around the world and nobody will take a blind bit of notice”?

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. After the spat over the Dalai Lama, Anglo-Chinese relations were on the right trajectory, and I think this is a very serious hiccup now, which will give a lot of people reason to pause and reflect.

We will continue with our inquiry, but this decision cannot go unchallenged. As Members of this House are well aware, as we enter this Chamber we pass under the archway which has been deliberately left with the damage inflicted by a bomb in the second world war. It is a reminder of the damage that can ultimately be caused by the enemies of freedom. The anchor in our world today is freedom. It gives us our sense of direction. It is how we decide between right and wrong. I invite the Government to condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Debate between Robert Flello and Richard Ottaway

Friday 13th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Whenever a Member comes high in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, he quickly realises how popular he is, but I had no doubt about what Bill I wanted to introduce, even though today is Friday the 13th. My concern over the scourge of metal theft started on a cold January morning in 2009, when the organist at Croydon parish church made a discovery of profound consequences. Melting snow was running through the roof, into the side chapels, choir vestry and straight on to the 19th-century Hill organ, causing serious damage. Not for the first time, bloody-minded thieves had targeted the grade I-listed church. On this occasion, they had stripped 200 square metres of lead from the roofs, causing more than £150,000 of damage—for metal worth little more than £4,000.

Everybody in the House has a constituency story about scrap metal theft, and to me the assault on Croydon minster highlights a common theme: the shocking disparity between the value of the stolen metal and the financial and emotional hurt and damage that the theft causes. My constituency has been hit consistently by metal theft. Public buildings, churches, schools and telecoms cables have been repeatedly targeted, and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) had the plaque stolen from his father’s grave. There was public outrage over the theft of two plaques from the Sanderstead war memorial that bore the names of 45 local people who sacrificed their lives in world war one. Two priceless plaques are lost to us for ever. Their scrap value was probably £50 but their value to the community was beyond measure.

Croydon has had the highest rate of metal theft in London. On average, London boroughs suffer five thefts a week, but in recent years Croydon has averaged 10. Twenty eight thefts were recorded in one week in April, and in May British Transport police conducted a high-profile raid on a scrap metal yard in west Croydon, recovering hundreds of crematorium and cemetery plaques. Since that raid, the number of reported metal thefts in the borough has plummeted by 38%. This backs up what the police tell us: that the scrap metal industry is the main outlet for stolen metal. It also exposes the failings of our current legislation, which was crafted more than half a century ago.

The House will be dismayed by the theft this week of a Henry Moore sculpture from the Henry Moore Foundation in Much Hadham. Metal thefts are hitting people across the UK daily. Energy networks are now averaging 16 incidents a day, and last year British Telecom received 100,000 customer reports of faults that occurred as a direct result of cable theft. In the past six years, more than a third of churches have been robbed. Insurance claims connected with such thefts have gone up by 70%, and in 2011 they reached a record high of £4.5 million, with the total cost to the Church of England exceeding £10 million.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I will not delay the House; I want to make just a quick intervention. I am told that some churches have had so many thefts that they are paying to have any remaining lead on their roofs stripped and replaced with inferior materials, simply because they cannot afford to keep claiming on the insurance or having the work done. They are therefore going to the other extreme and almost becoming metal theft vandals themselves. Let me also flag up for the hon. Gentleman another problem that is affecting many ordinary folk. A constituent of mine was outside cleaning his fridge-freezer—it was almost brand new. He popped in to boil the kettle, and when he came out it had gone, on the back of a truck somewhere. That is the level that some of these people are stooping to.

[Richard Ottaway]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in his first point. Having to replace roofs causes heritage problems. The low level of much of this crime is a point I will come to shortly.

The cost of metal theft to local authorities has shot up by 26% in a year. The latest stats reveal that nearly nine out of 10 councils across England and Wales have been the victims of scrap thieves. Road signs and drain covers are regularly disappearing. The cost to the UK economy has been estimated at more than £750 million by the Association of Chief Police Officers. In all honesty, however, the real figure is probably much higher.

What cannot be overestimated, however—it is very hard to measure—is the devastating impact that a single theft can have on the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. The theft of £40 of copper can cause £500,000-worth of damage. Three times this year, thieves have taken BT copper cables from the same spot in Bexley. Each time they knocked out about 2,000 landlines for four days. An entire community of homes lost broadband, mobile signals and the internet. Pendant alarms on elderly people could not work. In an emergency, no one could call 999 or even a relative. One shudders to think of the consequences if a serious event had occurred. Llandough hospital near Cardiff suffered a similar attack in December, resulting in the postponement of more than 80 operations, including for eight cancer patients. Last August, thieves broke into a house in Hartlepool to steal copper from a gas boiler, which led to a gas leak, a fire and a huge explosion. More than 100 people were evacuated and bystanders were injured by flying shards of glass.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Ottaway]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for this, the most controversial part of my Bill. This is the area in which the most criminality exists, and we need to tackle it head on.

[Robert Flello]

I was on one of my regular visits to parts of my constituency with the police recently, and we were sitting near a scrap metal yard that has been identified as creating a nuisance. As we watched the vans going in, the police officer I was with would frequently say, “He’s known to the police.” The drivers of many of the vehicles going into the yard were known to the police for other acts of criminality. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this reinforces his point?