Phone Theft

Olly Glover Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. Along with the hon. Members for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) and for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran), she spoke eloquently of the emotional impact of a stolen phone. I still have a 2G Nokia, but that is another issue. A phone is far more than just something we can send text messages on or make calls. It is where we store our memories, where many people find romance and where we access critical services, as the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley said. It is so much more, and that is why the impact of a stolen phone is very significant and far more disruptive than it would have been 20 years ago.

Members have highlighted the important role that tech companies and phone companies need to play in preventing and mitigating phone theft. They also highlighted how the lack of police resources can sometimes mean a lack of immediate police interest or a need to improve police process. We must make sure that our police are supported, so that they can help people who are victims of this crime. Any form of crime can leave us feeling vulnerable. I was once burgled. Very little was taken, but nevertheless, the sense of worry and the fact that it could happen again stays with us and preys on the mind, particularly when by oneself late in the evening. That manifests itself here as well as anywhere else.

The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) made an important point about the role that illegal e-bikes play in this crime. I commend to Members a recent report by the all-party parliamentary group for cycling and walking about the issue of illegal e-bikes, which outlines a number of steps that could be taken to better regulate them and deal with that problem.

Government policy is that police will be able to search properties without a warrant for stolen phones or other electronically geotagged items under measures in the Crime and Policing Bill. Clearly, as we have heard this afternoon, more needs to be done to stop the tidal wave of mobile phone theft. It is right that the Government are taking steps in that direction but, if they are really serious about stopping mobile phone theft, they must also restore proper community policing, where officers have the time and resources to focus on their local neighbourhoods. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home and walking down their own streets, but for too many people in the UK today that is simply not the reality.

The Conservatives’ unnecessary cuts have left our police forces overstretched, under-resourced and unable to focus on the crimes that affect our communities the most. Every day—[Interruption.] I am sure the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) knows how to make an intervention, if he would like to do so, rather than speaking from a sedentary position; he has been in the House some time. Every day, 6,000 cases are closed by the police across England and Wales without a suspect even being identified, and just 6% of crimes are reported to the police and result in a suspect being charged. That is partly because the Conservatives slashed the number of police community support officers by more than 4,500 after 2015, when they were in government by themselves—and with a decisive majority, in most instances.

There are significant public concerns about the prevalence of mobile phone thefts, particularly snatch thefts, as we have heard in this debate, where perpetrators on bikes and mopeds steal mobile phones from people’s hands, often in busy urban areas. The exact offence linked to the theft of a phone will depend upon the particular circumstances of the case, such as where the phone was taken—on the street or from inside someone’s home—and whether force was used, but we know from the 2024 Crime Survey for England and Wales that an estimated 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on the street in the year ending March 2024. That is equivalent to 200 snatch thefts a day and is a 153% increase on the number of incidents in the year ending March 2023.

London is regarded as the epicentre of phone thefts, with £50 million-worth of phones reported stolen in London in 2024. The National Crime Agency says that stolen phones are disposed of overseas, in China, Dubai, Algeria and many other countries, and suggests that some offenders will access data contained within apps on stolen mobile phones in order to commit additional offences, such as theft from bank accounts. Reports published by the Mail Online and The Times state that organised crime groups pay people up to £200 per phone that they steal, showing the complexity of the crime we are trying to tackle and its links to other forms of crime.

Those organised crime groups ship stolen phones overseas, where they are sold on or broken down into parts that can be sold or used for repairs. It has been suggested that China is the preferred destination for stolen handsets, since China, unlike the UK, the European Union and many other countries, is not a member of the central equipment identity register, a global database that mobile networks use to block stolen devices.

The Government are taking some welcome steps on this issue. As part of their safer streets mission, they are working to

“crack down on theft and other crimes that make people feel unsafe in our communities, including…strengthening neighbourhood policing”

and restoring public confidence. The safer streets mission includes a neighbourhood policing guarantee:

“Each neighbourhood will have named, contactable officers to tackle the issues facing their communities”,

including dedicated teams who will spend their time on the beat, with guaranteed police patrols in town centres and other hotspot areas at peak times. Central to that guarantee is the Government’s commitment to putting 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles. The Government aim to have the additional 13,000 in place by 2029.

In February, the Home Secretary hosted a mobile phone theft summit,

“to drive new action to tackle mobile phone thefts and secure a collective effort to grip this criminality.”

The summit, attended by police leaders, the National Crime Agency, the Mayor of London and tech companies, discussed ways to break the business model of mobile thieves. The Home Secretary urged all in attendance to join forces to help to

“design out and disincentivise phone theft, by making phones effectively worthless to criminals.”

It was agreed that the mobile phone theft summit would reconvene in three months’ time, but we have not yet seen any public record of the summit meeting again.

As hon. Members have said, there is an important role here for the tech industry. While some companies such as Apple and Google offer tools to lock, locate and wipe devices remotely and require identity verification, there is a lot more that they must do to ensure that this crime is dealt with.

In conclusion, losing a phone is more than just losing a bit of technology. Our phones have now become intrinsic to most of our lives, and many people are unable to pay for things without their phone. That is why it is important that we have debated this issue and that the Government continue with their efforts to tackle it. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.