Metal Theft

Ian Swales Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I, too, congratulate the Members who have initiated this debate, which, as we can tell by the turnout in the House, is on a hugely important issue. Metal theft will not go away easily. Why? Because it is so worth doing. Some of the figures are quite staggering. While BT’s stock-market value is about £15 billion, the estimated current value of the metal in its cables is £50 billion. There are billions and billions of pounds’ worth of metal in our country, in some cases literally lying around—in the railways, for example. Thieves are now sawing down metal railings, and I recently canvassed a street in my constituency where all the drain covers had been stolen. Making the assets themselves secure is obviously impossible.

Because of the sums involved, the people engaged in this activity run all the way from petty thieves to organised crime. Just as in other organised crimes such as drug dealing, some of the big players will not do their own dirty work; others will be stealing to order for them. We all know that these crimes can cause massive costs and disruption. Recently visiting friends in a village in Oxfordshire, I could communicate only by text in the last two days before the visit because the village had been entirely cut off by the theft of telephone and internet cables.

Shortly before I came into the Chamber this evening, a member of the House staff told me that Norwood library recently had its roof stolen and £2 million-worth of damage was done to books and computers as a result. We have heard other stories from other Members, so I shall not say much more about that. Such stories show that these crimes are far from victimless, as a single theft can impact on thousands of people.

I am vice-chairman of the all-party steel and metal recycling group, and in that role I recently visited two sites of European Metal Recycling, the largest metal recycler in Europe, which has 67 sites across the UK and employs 2,000 people. The notes for my speech state that this is a “highly reputable organisation”, but I might need to speak to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) about that. At its small site in Marske in my constituency, I saw many of the measures mentioned in the motion already in action—for example, documentation, video recording, photo and vehicle identification are routine and there are clear rules about how to check material. The original source might be a council as in the case of road signs or items might be labelled as BT equipment. At its large site in Hartlepool, I saw what a huge-scale operation, including car shredding, looks like.

Companies like EMR support regulation. EMR says:

“All we ask is that the Government takes the necessary time to work with the industry to ensure that regulations are as tightly and effectively drawn as possible and that the necessary level of resource is committed to enforce rigorously once in place. We have had 20 years of increased regulation and poor enforcement in our industry. Without doing both of these things the legitimate industry will be harmed, the illegitimate thrive and there will be little or no impact on metal theft.”

Let me touch briefly on another area—prevention. All people with metal-related assets need to think more about how they can discourage theft. I have already mentioned BT’s franking of its equipment, but a lot more could be done. Energy companies, Network Rail and many others should look at how to make it easy for dealers and enforcement officers to spot stolen material. They must ensure that their legitimate scrap disposal routes are advertised to the industry so that anyone else receiving identifiable material knows that it is stolen. More questions must be asked about the source of the material, such as high voltage cables or transformer equipment. We must make it easy for people to report others that they see involved in this activity.

We should not legislate for the sake of it, but we should ask the police what is necessary—and make the punishments fit the crime. It is time for action and I urge the House to support the motion.