Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, this has been quite a long journey. I first asked an Oral Question on 3 October last year, arguing the case for cashless transactions and the necessity of amending the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964. On 10 November, in a Remembrance Day debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, a number of noble Lords, including me, spoke about the despicable theft of war memorials for their scrap metal value. The Bill we are debating tonight received a Second Reading in your Lordships' House on 21 November, and I gave notice of my intention then to table the amendment which appears today on the Marshalled List. I drew attention to ACPO's estimate that the national cost of metal theft was £770 million. I also referred to the 16,000 hours of delays suffered by rail passengers over the past three years caused by the theft of signalling cable, and to other examples of metal theft such as lead from church roofs, manhole covers, telephone wire and works of art. Since then the scale of the problem has continued to grow, and every week brings fresh accounts of new theft. Last week, for example, my own local newspaper, the Worcester News, reported that 350 metres of BT underground copper cable had been stolen, which cut off telephone and broadband service in one of the major districts of the city. Numerous heritage railways have written to me to say that scores of metal items such as rails, lamps and even a fork-lift truck have been stolen for their scrap value. I have another press report dated 1 March saying that seven churches are being targeted and robbed every night for the lead on their roofs; and in a new twist Network Rail reports that, in recent signalling cable thefts on the Cotswold line between Oxford and Worcester, the theft of a 650-volt distribution cable had been concealed by the insertion of a short length of domestic cable in its place—an incredibly dangerous manoeuvre. On it goes. To his credit, the Minister has indicated that he is determined to do something about it, as did his predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. I am particularly grateful to her, and to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, for putting their names to Amendment 156D, and for their stamina in staying here at this late hour tonight. The Home Secretary announced in a Written Statement on 26 January that government amendments to the Bill would be tabled to, "““create a new criminal offence to prohibit cash payments to purchase scrap metal; and significantly increase the fines for all offences under the existing Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964””.—[Official Report, 26/1/12; cols. WS 80-81.]" The Minister may be aware that I immediately issued a statement warmly welcoming that announcement. It took a long time for the government amendments to appear, but last week they finally did, and we are debating them now as Amendments 157F, 157G and 157J. What the Government are proposing is fine except for one baffling respect. For reasons that have not been properly explained so far, they are proposing an exemption for itinerant sellers. As I understand it, that will mean that the sale of metal to an itinerant collector will not have to be recorded, whether it is a householder getting rid of some unwanted domestic appliance or a metal thief using the itinerant as a way of getting into the chain. By proposing that exemption, the Government are opening up a serious loophole that could undermine much of the benefit that their move towards cashless transactions will create. My understanding is that it is not difficult to register under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 as an itinerant collector, which is defined in that Act as, "““a person regularly engaged in collecting waste materials, and old, broken, worn out or defaced articles, by means of visits from house to house””." While there may not be too many of those registered at the moment, surely there is a risk that there will be many more once word went round that this was a way to avoid the cashless requirement of being a scrap-metal dealer. The Minister will be aware that the itinerant seller exemption has caused alarm among many in the industry. For example, SITA, to which both the Minister and I have paid visits in recent months to discuss this legislation, said this in its latest briefing: "““There is no reason why a cashless system cannot be implemented by bona fide itinerant collectors, along with the rest of the scrap metal industry … Moreover, the requirement for a cashless transaction between the itinerant collector and a scrap metal merchant will in any event necessitate the former to maintain a bank account with provision for electronic or cheque payment. It is therefore illogical to exempt the initial transaction between the seller and the itinerant collector, but to (rightly) mandate a cashless transaction ""for the on-sale of the material to a scrap metal dealer. Traceability over the entire chain, from seller to intermediary to dealer, will be broken along with proof of provenance of the metal presented for sale””." That is a pretty convincing argument and is why I have tabled my own Amendment 157H to the government amendment to delete the exemption. I shall listen very carefully to the Minister's response to these points before deciding whether to press that amendment. In particular, I hope that I will hear him say that the Scrap Metal Dealers Act will be replaced by an entirely fresh piece of legislation to be introduced in the new Session. That could deal with all the issues relating not just to itinerant sellers but to the registration and licensing of the trade generally. Meanwhile, it would be churlish of me not to welcome the Government's acceptance of the argument that I first put forward almost six months ago that an essential first step in tackling the epidemic of metal theft is to move to cashless transactions and to increase the penalties for persons committing this appalling, anti-social and dangerous crime. I beg to move.