Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Robin Walker Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Winnick]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on being so conscientious in dealing with these problems in his constituency. We all know that he is a very conscientious Member of Parliament.

We must not have any illusions and assume that changing the law will result in everyone who is involved in this business suddenly changing their ways. Many of them will do everything they can to evade the law and continue to make a fast buck.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman said local authorities need to have the resources to enforce the laws. One of the great strengths of the Bill is that it provides those resources through the ability to raise a licensing fee. Does he agree that the scrap metal industry should pay for the costs of licensing?

[Mr Winnick]

Yes, of course. That is a very valid point, but I am also saying that where local authorities require further resources to carry out their duties and responsibilities they should not be in a position where they cannot do so. If an authority does not face such problems of resources, so be it. Just to clarify things, what I am saying is that whatever the source of revenue, local authorities should not be in a position, once this Bill becomes law, to say, “We want to do it. We know it is important, but we have not got the resources.” I do not want to participate in an argument today about how local authorities are being so adversely affected by the cuts, because there will be many other occasions to do so. I have not come here to deal with that, and Government Members should be pleased at least about that.

Reference is made in the introductory notes about the cost to the country; it is estimated that between £260 million and almost £800 million could be lost each year. So we are talking about large sums indeed. Various clauses of the Bill will doubtless be examined in Committee. I note that the Local Government Association would like more flexibility to impose local conditions, which is, again, a Committee matter. Moreover, the same organisation said in its memorandum that it fears that what is being proposed may not be enough to change the behaviour of some of the worst offenders. I think I have dealt with that aspect, but it needs to be emphasised that strong measures will have to be taken once the Bill becomes law, and we hope that local authorities and the police will carry out their duties accordingly.

Clause 15 proposes that the Act should be reviewed every five years, which, again, will be a matter for the Committee. I would say that this should be done every three years. Given that the problem is as acute as the hon. Member for Croydon South rightly said it is, is it really enough to say that this should be looked at only once five years has passed? I very much urge that that period should be shorter. Clause 3(7) provides for bodies that need to be involved in registration and so on. I would include local authorities in that, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will give consideration to that point as well.

All in all, I believe that what is being proposed today is essential. It is what our constituents want, and it is what local authorities and the police require in order to deal with what we all agree is a major social problem—perhaps I should call it an antisocial problem, as that would be more precise. I know that one or two Government Members at the back of the Chamber do not have much confidence in the state intervening, but if ever there was a case for it, this is it. I hope I am not provoking the hon. Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), but saying that was somewhat irresistible when I saw the two of them sitting together on the Back Benches. The argument that the state does not have a role to play in so many matters falls, as is quite clear; even they may recognise that this is a problem that cannot be left to be dealt with locally and does require state intervention, hence the reason for this Bill and why I am pleased to support it.

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[Philip Davies]

Sadly, my hon. Friend is right. One of the great outrages of the Labour Government was that they introduced a law which meant that everybody, no matter how well or badly they behaved themselves, had to be released from prison halfway through their prison sentence. It was not that they became eligible for release halfway through their sentence; they had to be released halfway through their sentence. For some of the lower-end offences, people can be released much earlier than halfway through the sentence.

According to the Ministry of Justice, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm, somebody sentenced to six months in prison can be let out within six weeks, which is a scandal. Somebody sentenced to prison for 12 months can be released after three months, and somebody sent to prison for two years can be released after seven and a half months. This is what the Government should be focusing on. Let us have proper sentences handed out by the court. When people who are involved in this despicable crime are sent to prison, let us keep them in prison for the length of the sentence that the court handed out, rather than letting them back out into the community in five minutes flat to carry on from where they left off. If we were to go down that route, it would have a much greater impact on the level of crimes such as metal theft.

Technology will be a huge tool in counteracting such crime. I mentioned SmartWater earlier. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South also praised it in glowing terms. The SmartWater Foundation, which is providing it free of charge for all war memorials, is to be highly commended. Network Rail experienced a huge reduction in metal theft when it used SmartWater. To illustrate the point, the SmartWater technology is so good that different parts of the track can be identified by the type of water on it, so when somebody turns up at a scrap dealership with metal that is covered by SmartWater, not only can it be identified as stolen, but it is possible to identify exactly where it has been stolen from.

This technology is one of the main reasons why we should be hopeful for the future and about our ability to tackle the crime of metal theft. Rather than using it just to catch people, SmartWater and the police have been working together to use it more as a deterrent. They take the ultraviolet equipment to the local scrap metal dealerships, put up signage saying that anything that has SmartWater on it will not be accepted at the dealership, and that all scrap metal is tested. There is plenty of evidence to show that when SmartWater is used, scrap metal dealers will not accept stolen metal because they know what the consequences will be if they are caught with it on their premises.

One of the most telling things that my hon. Friend said in his opening remarks was that the low chance of being caught was driving the crime. We must use SmartWater much more. I know from a question to the Church Commissioners last month that the Church of England is now using SmartWater to cover many of its roofs, and we know that it is to be used on war memorials. I think that we should be encouraging as many people as possible to use SmartWater to deal with this problem at a reasonably low cost.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) referred to the British Metals Recycling Association, which he said—I think he is right—appears to be in favour of the Bill, but some of the things it has said in the past have actually made a great deal of sense. It has identified illegal scrap metal sites as the main problem and called for better enforcement of existing legislation by the police and the Environment Agency to close illegal sites. If that is right—I have no reason to think otherwise—and illegal scrap metal sites are the main problem, the introduction of an awful lot of new regulation and new costs for legal scrap metal dealerships would not only make no difference to the problem, but be likely to make it worse. The only possible impact would be to encourage some of the legitimate scrap metal dealers, who do not want the cost of the regulation to become illegal. The danger is that some of the Bill’s provisions might inadvertently make the problem worse.

The British Metals Recycling Association has previously expressed concern that any move towards cashless transactions could simply disadvantage small, legal and well-run scrap sites, unless there was

“effective enforcement against unregulated operators”.

[Mr Robin Walker]

My hon. Friend is clearly a champion of free markets, but he must understand that in order for them to work properly they need a level playing field. Is not one of the risks that the current changes in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 will make it difficult for small operators if the unlicensed operators are able to accept cash and they are not? Is not that why the proposed change in this Bill to make sure that all operators are subject to the cash ban is so important? It would provide the level playing field that will allow a proper free market.

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely take my hon. Friend’s point, which he makes characteristically well. The issue is whether we will end up with a level playing field. I do not doubt that we will end up with a level playing field for all legitimate scrap metal dealers—that is clearly the case—but, according to the British Metals Recycling Association, much of the problem is not with the legal dealers, but with the illegal ones, so we do not have a level playing field and all the Bill would do is further uneven it by making it even harder for legitimate sites to compete with illegal ones.

The key point—this is where we might come to some agreement—is that this could work, as the British Metals Recycling Association has stated, only if there were

“effective enforcement against unregulated operators”.

My concern is that we would have an awful lot of enforcement against regulated operators, which is what the Bill would do. It is about targeting those who are already regulated and piling more regulation on them, but that will not help to tackle the unregulated ones.

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[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). I welcome the Opposition’s support for the Bill. I am afraid that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), I must apologise that I will have to leave the Chamber shortly after making my comments as I have long-standing engagements in my constituency. No discourtesy is meant. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, can read him like a book. When we come to read his comments, I think that they will read like a book. However, I know that they were well intentioned and he made some important points on sentencing with which I broadly agree.

I speak as the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on combating metal theft. I join the Opposition spokesman in welcoming the work of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) in introducing his private Member’s Bill, which sadly did not have enough time to be passed. He co-chairs the group with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Chris Kelly).

I am here to offer my strong support for the strong and proportionate private Member’s Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) has introduced. I think that I speak for all members of the all-party group, both in the Commons and the Lords, in offering that support. Our group is sponsored by the Energy Networks Association and its meetings have been attended by a huge number of organisations, including the Local Government Association, the Country Land and Business Association, the War Memorials Trust, Network Rail, BT and the Church Commissioners. All of them have talked about the problems of metal theft and the importance of acting on it.

I became involved in this issue because, as a local MP, cases were being brought to me all the time. The most dramatic was the attempted theft of metal from the roof of Worcester cathedral. That is not a minor site in my constituency, but one that is central to it. A bold and daring attempt was made to strip lead from the roof during daylight hours. Fortunately, it was not successful. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley mentioned that brass theft has become more common. All the door furniture in an entire residential square in Worcester was stolen in one go. I am glad to say that the police acted quickly and caught the burglar red-handed with the goods in his bag. My constituents have also suffered from many train delays caused by metal theft.

As other hon. Members have pointed out, lives have been put at risk across the country by metal theft. In Malvern, just outside my constituency, the heating system of a public swimming pool was broken in order to steal copper pipes. Steam was pouring out, which could have endangered the lives of children in the area. It is very important to crack down on this theft.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South said that there is a chain of supply in the metal recycling industry. The all-party group has discussed metal laundering and the ease with which stolen metal can slip into the supply stream and disappear. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley suggested that we should prosecute and act more seriously against scrap metal dealers who handle stolen goods. However, he has to recognise that it is all too easy for goods to be anonymised and stripped of their identity very quickly at the early stages of the process. Metal laundering is of concern to all legitimate scrap metal dealers, because they can be implicated in crimes when people drive into their yards with large amounts of scrap metal that are difficult to break down and identify. That is why some of the actions in the Bill, such as introducing proper licensing, are important and proportionate, and will be welcomed by the vast majority of the industry.

It is vital that we act quickly to replace the 1964 Act, which is clearly no longer fit for purpose. The cash ban is extremely welcome. As I have warned in previous debates, however, without a comprehensive licensing regime and a crackdown on illegal and unlicensed scrap metal dealers, a cash ban risks driving people into the hands of the black market and towards smaller scrap metal dealers who are less likely to obey the law and do things properly. It is important that the two things come together.

[Julie Hilling]

It seems to me that attitudinal change is also needed. A metal thief who gave an interview to a journalist said:

“What’s good about nicking copper is that you don’t see the person who owns it. It’s only the insurance companies and the fat-cat train companies that suffer, so I don’t feel any guilt about what I am doing.”

It is a real problem that it is seen as an anonymous crime, whereas in fact it deeply affects all our communities.

[Mr Walker]

I strongly agree with the hon. Lady. It is far from a victimless crime. The victims of this crime are all of our constituents who suffer long delays on the railways and whose lives can be put in danger by metal theft. We have to hammer home in this debate that this crime has many victims. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South has pointed out the huge disparity between the small amount of money that is gained by selling stolen metal and the enormous economic and social costs that it causes.

We had some interesting exchanges earlier about the support of the police in this area. I commend the work of the West Mercia police in Worcester, who have cracked down on metal theft. I have had a lot of conversations with them. One thing that made me eager to attend this debate was the neighbourhood watch meeting in St John’s in Worcester that I attended. Metal theft was by far the most significant issue on the agenda. I recently received an e-mail from the local policing sergeant in St John’s to update me on the police’s progress in combating metal theft. He started with the welcome news that such crimes were down in Worcester in the first six months of the year compared with the previous year’s figures, although only slightly. They were down from 165 reported offences in January to June 2011 to 103 reported offences in the same period this year. That is a drop of a third, and the credit has to go to West Mercia police. He went on to say:

“I work closely with colleagues from the Environment Agency, VOSA and Smartwater. Our consensus is that the licensing is the best point of attack.”

That is why this Bill is so welcome and important, and why it deserves the support of this House.

The sergeant had other suggestions, some of which are reflected in the Bill:

“Compulsory photo ID for Scrap carriers would be a good start. Another issue”,

as we have discussed,

“is sentencing. One of our rogue yards was successfully prosecuted last year for failing to operate with a valid license. He was fined a rather pathetic £200.”

I agree with him that, given that that yard can take several thousand pounds a day, that seems ridiculous.

The sergeant made another suggestion that I am not sure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and others would support:

“Finally, what about scrap carriers being licensed to a specific local authority. I stopped a van…a few weeks ago. The occupants had convictions for burglary, assault and a host of other offences. They were in the process of applying for a licence from Sandwell, where they lived. Present legislation allows travelling criminals to move across our Force border under the pretence of collecting scrap. Make the scrap carrier stay on his own area. It would make this easier to police, and might prevent a few burglaries in Worcestershire!”

There would be practical difficulties with doing that, but it is perhaps something to consider in Committee.

We had a brief debate about technology. Technology has an important part to play, but it is not something that we can legislate for. Alongside the legislation, it is welcome that we can use new technologies such as SmartWater. Yesterday at the Farnborough air show, I met QinetiQ, which has an exciting new technology called OptaSense, which effectively turns telephone wires into sensors. It is possible to tell where down the length of a telephone wire it is broken or whether digging is happening nearby. That might be very useful in protecting the railways and telecommunications systems in this country. However, technology alone will not deal with the issue. There is a need for greater licensing.

This is a good Bill, it is well thought through and it is much needed. This is an example of Parliament working in the way that it should to respond to the concerns of our constituents and the issues that are raised with us.