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Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
I will call Dr Jeevun Sandher to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.
Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of bike theft in Loughborough.
Thank you for allowing me to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I raised the important issue of bike theft in the main Chamber a few weeks ago, when the Minister kindly provided me with an overview of what her Department is doing to address this incredibly important issue. I thank her and the House for allowing me the opportunity to speak and ask more about it today.
Motorbike theft is a scourge of my constituency, threatening the basic sense of security that people should enjoy. People worry that one day they will wake up unable to get to work, and their concern and frustration is on the rise as criminals act with impunity. Every person in our community and across the country deserves to feel safe, and that starts with giving the police more powers to tackle crime, getting more officers on the street to prevent antisocial behaviour, and working with the local community to stop bike theft for good.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He has referred to the stats in his own area. The Police Service of Northern Ireland notes that the number of motorcycles or scramblers recovered by owners in Northern Ireland is relatively low: for example, in 2022, only 30 out of 136 were recovered. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that while the theft statistics are fairly high, the recovery statistics are really low? He underlined the need for the police to have more powers; perhaps the Minister could indicate what those powers might be. Will the Minister give any advice to the regional Administrations to make sure that we tackle the issue better together?
Dr Sandher
It is fair to say that bike theft is a scourge across our nations and islands. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The issue of motorbike theft in Loughborough was brought to my attention during my campaign, and the full scale of the problem has become clearer through time. I will mention some constituents who came to me about this issue: Sarah Staples, whose husband was followed home in broad daylight by criminals whose sole intention was to steal his motorbike, and Stephen Hughes, who also raised bike theft with me. When I asked about the issue in my constituency, I heard story after story of bike theft and attempted bike theft.
Across the country, an average of 59 motorbikes are stolen every single day. That is 21,000 motorbikes and mopeds this year alone—thefts from driveways, back gardens and even locked garages. Criminals are acting brazenly, without care for the consequences. One in five bikers will have their vehicle stolen in their lifetime—that is 11 times more likely than for car owners. The culprits are also far less likely to be caught. It is not just in the case of motorbikes that the rise in theft statistics is worrying: a 30% rise in e-bike ownership means a new lucrative target for thieves who can cash in on vehicles that are hard to trace and quick to resell.
When I raised this issue with my constituents and put it out on social media, the post received thousands of views; tens of constituents came back with cases of stolen bikes, and dozens more with stories of attempted thefts. Several people spoke about how motorbike thefts were becoming so common that it was almost impossible for them to insure their bikes. Let us imagine someone not being able to insure their car because it was at risk of getting stolen—this debate would be taking place in the main Chamber, not Westminster Hall—but this issue is still very serious for those who are affected.
We know that motorcycle theft is driven mostly by organised gangs. Some opportunists steal mopeds and scooters for short-term use and recklessly abandon them by the wayside. Others target high-value vehicles for resale, export or dismantling. Many openly boast about their criminal activities on local community forums and social media, making a mockery of those who cannot stop them and those whose bikes and possessions are stolen from them.
One constituent told me about their scooter being taken from the forecourt of a petrol station. They were too scared to intervene because of how threatening the people looked. Another person told me about a would-be thief threatening to kill them when prevented from stealing their motorbike. Another constituent’s teenager saved for months for a moped to take them to college, only for it to be stolen from their drive in broad daylight. There is also evidence on social media of a network specifically set up to sell and source stolen bikes in Loughborough.
Too often these criminals are getting away without being punished. They are acting without consequence, unafraid of being caught and laughing as they ride away with stolen property. For them, stealing bikes is low risk and high reward, but for my constituents, of course, it is not. Bike theft is not a trivial matter, and it is certainly not a victimless crime. It affects young apprentices travelling to work at 6 am, students commuting to lectures, teachers coming home from work and employees finishing late shifts in factories and other workplaces across the country, who depart after a long day only to find that they can no longer get home.
We can tackle the scourge of bike theft only by working together—as members of a community with a stake in one another’s wellbeing. Leicestershire police, I am pleased to say, recently launched Operation Original to great success. It is joining local officers with the force’s drone team and road policing unit, with specially trained police on unmarked motorbikes going the extra mile to keep my community safe. I thank the officers for that and for the arrests that they have made, the 42 vehicles stopped, the 13 motorbikes seized and the four individuals cautioned for driving offences. Since the operation began, reports of stolen vehicles have dropped by 36% in targeted areas. That is a dramatic reduction in crime in such a short space of time.
We have heard the police say that the operation has been “a great success”, and that they have
“disrupted criminal activity…and taken vehicles off the road which are being used to commit crime. We are…making full use of the range of tactics available”.
But there is more that we must do, and that I must do, to raise awareness of bike theft in our community. This is about continuing to be vigilant, promoting prevention strategies and understanding what we can do to support one another and help to prevent crime. It is about making sure that bikes are locked, keeping them covered to make them harder to steal, and reporting thefts to the police so that we can fully understand the extent of the problem.
The Government are supporting us nationally, and I thank them for that. The Crime and Policing Bill will give officers extra powers to seize and crush more bikes, and there will be stronger antisocial behaviour orders to clamp down on offenders who repeatedly terrorise communities. All of that is deeply welcome. On top of it all, of course, our aim is to increase police numbers to ensure that more officers are available on our streets. In addition, we can do more work to help officers get the training they need to pursue motorbikes so that they can catch those responsible, unencumbered by rules and regulations that make it harder to stop criminals, rather than easier.
I ask the Minister to set out the work that she and the Department are doing, not only on stopping crime in general but specifically on motorbike and bike theft in Loughborough, Shepshed and the villages and, of course, across the country. Every person deserves to feel safe in their community, but that is clearly not possible when they are seeing their property at risk of being stolen from their driveways in a threatening manner that undermines the very sense of safety that all of us should feel in this country. Bike theft is not something that we can simply brush aside or ignore because it is convenient to do so. We must refuse to back down in the face of intimidation by investing in our police, working with the local community and tackling the scourge of bike theft in Loughborough.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Stringer, and to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) on securing this debate and on leading the charge in Parliament for more action for his constituents on bike theft. He was right when he said that if cars were being stolen to the same degree that bikes are, there would be more of an outcry. It is right that he and other Members raise this issue, because it is deeply personal to many of our constituents.
There is not just the inconvenience, the cost and the burden of having a bike stolen, but the fear of further crime and the feeling that someone will have about their community and their safety within it when it appears that people can get away with such crimes without any consequence. I want to support my hon. Friend’s campaign and to help where I can.
As always in such debates, it is a shame that we cannot have a dual debate with multiple Ministers saying what they are doing, because I know that my colleagues in the Department for Transport, for example, would be keen to explain how they are looking at cycling and bike theft. We are working with them and other Government Departments. I will set out some of the things that we are doing in the Home Office, however, which I hope my hon. Friend will support and which I hope will help in the fight against knife theft—sorry, bike theft.
I will set out our approach to crime and policing. For too long, what is often seen as lower-level crime has been accepted and not pursued in the way that we would want it to be. I have many conversations with policing colleagues—I was having some today about knife crime, hence my mis-speak just now—and there are really interesting connections between what is perceived as lower-level crime and more significant organised crime. The more that our police gather intelligence about where there are connections and where thefts are more systematic and linked with serious organised crime, the better our policing will be.
The first principle is that no crime is too small. Across the piece, whether it is retail crime or bike theft, we and our communities expect the police to investigate and to do what they can. People do not always expect there to be an outcome to such investigations, but they want crimes to be investigated. They want the evidence to be used where it can be, and they want to understand and to be kept informed about what is happening with their case.
The second principle is that policing is best done locally. We can prevent crime if we create a climate where it is very clear that there is policing in our neighbourhoods and on our streets that will not tolerate theft. My hon. Friend talked about different types of bike theft. In some cases, kids might steal a bike and then discard it when they have had their fun, as they see it. Others are stealing to order for a higher value and have more links to criminal networks. We need to tackle those things differently, but the principle of having police in our communities who are policing our streets, being vigilant, understanding what is going on and building up an intelligence picture of their local community is key. That is why we will make sure that there are 3,000 extra police on our streets by next April, and why we are spending £200 million on top of the multibillion-pound settlement for our police forces.
Leicestershire police has plans to grow its neighbourhood team by 56 full-time equivalent officers in this financial year. That physical presence—being where the crime takes place—will make a real difference. We are also looking at the data. In fact, we are doing lots of work to map the areas of significant crime and where the risks are, and we are making sure that the police intervene where we need them to.
My hon. Friend talked about working with the local authority and there are things that we can do. We can improve street lighting and CCTV, and we can design our streets with better technology that helps us to catch criminals.
My hon. Friend mentioned the new powers that we are introducing, and I will touch on two of them. The first concerns the way that criminals override locking systems to steal vehicles, including motorbikes and cars. We know that that electronic compromise is now the predominant method of vehicle theft, so in the Crime and Policing Bill we are introducing a ban on having any of these electronic devices. At the moment, if someone uses them to steal something, it is a crime, but just having them is not. However, there is no reason to have these devices other than to steal things, so we will be changing the law to criminalise the possession, importation, making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply an electronic device that can be used to steal a vehicle.
The second thing we are going to do will make a real difference. Indeed, I was on a visit with Thames Valley police last week, and we spoke about the difference this change will make in tackling bike theft. Officers should be able to enter and search premises where they reasonably believe that stolen items, such as GPS-tracked bikes, are located. At the moment they need to get a warrant before they can go in, but we know that that takes time, and by the time they have done that the bike might have been moved on. Where GPS tracking shows that an item is behind closed doors, we will facilitate the swift seizure of what we know to be stolen property, and the police will be able to go in and get it without needing a warrant. That will be a valuable tool for tackling bike theft.
What happens to those bikes after they have been stolen is also really important and we need to tackle that piece of the pie as well. Ministers in other Departments are looking at using the Online Safety Act 2023; I am very interested to see how that plays out. There are now duties on social media and tech companies to prevent the advertising of stolen goods. If people are selling bikes online that turn out to be stolen, there is a duty on social media companies not to allow that. It is relatively early days to see how the Online Safety Act will play out, but we should all be monitoring how it works to prevent the sale of stolen goods online. That applies not just to bikes, but more widely; I was in a retail crime meeting earlier where we talked about how items from shops more generally are sold and how we tackle that in the online space.
My hon. Friend talked about the campaign that his local police have done, which sounds as though it was very successful, using drone teams and the road policing unit, with everybody working together. In the few weeks that I have been in this role, my experience has been that when the police put their mind to tackling a problem, they are supremely good at doing it. The problem is that our police struggle with resourcing and huge bureaucracy, so they do not have enough time to do the things that we want them to do—but once they decide that something is a priority, they get results really successfully. That operational policing response is really important.
That example from my hon. Friend’s local area also speaks to the need to ensure that our police have new technology. For 14 years, there has been a lack of investment in policing; through those years of austerity, we lost not just police officers, but any investment in new infrastructure. We know that drones can be revolutionary in policing, but we need to ensure that the police are funded in the right way to buy the kit that they need, so we will be bringing out a police reform White Paper, building on our decision already to save £100 million through the police and crime commissioner model.
We will shortly introduce a police reform Bill, which I hope will enable our police officers to do what we want them to be doing—focusing on physical crime in their communities and spending less time on bureaucracy, using AI and other new technology that can free them up to do other things. A central policing function will deal with some of the crime that is best tackled at a national level, so that the police can deal with issues such as bike theft in a targeted way.
Using that intelligence-led approach with policing locally is important. Some good work is shared through a couple of national bodies that come together to look at some of these issues. For example, the motorcycle crime reduction group brings together Government and representatives from all the different sectors—manufacturing, insurance, the police, the security industry and rider interest groups—to reduce theft. That is a useful place to spread best practice. The national vehicle crime working group, which is led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and their vehicle crime lead, brings together vehicle crime specialists to look at emerging trends in response to this kind of crime and to talk about good practice and strategies to dismantle the wider criminal groups that are responsible for that level of crime.
Across the piece, I reiterate that bike theft is a significant crime. We should take it seriously, treat our communities with the respect that they deserve and expect better. We can do more in terms of the design of bikes to design out crime. We want members of the public to do what they can; my hon. Friend talked about the need to make sure that bikes are properly locked and that any theft is reported, and that is crucial.
Bike marking is also important, so that people know the model number. The police—in Thames valley, say, since I was talking about Oxford—often talk to me about the number of cases where bikes are stolen, but the people who report the theft to the police do not know the number on the bike, so there is no way of marking it. People should ensure that they take a picture of their number or that the bike is marked in some way so that they can tell the police. There are a couple of online spaces, such as BikeRegister, where bikes can be registered. That can also help if the bikes get stolen.
We need to bring our policing back to our neighbourhoods and make sure that we are following the evidence in terms of emerging patterns of bike theft, which can be linked to more serious organised crime. We need to have the right legislation in place so that the police can act when they need to and work across Government Departments to make sure that we are pulling every lever we possibly can to design out and reduce this kind of crime.
I conclude by thanking my hon. Friend for securing this debate. It has been a useful opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that we face. As ever, I welcome more ideas and suggestions from his constituents and from him on what else we could do.
Question put and agreed to.