Contribution
My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which I thoroughly support, despite it committing the legislative sin of having a list in it. It references animal hustling, which is probably already a criminal offence in a different area of the law, so I will leave that alone. The question surely posed by the amendment is: why is a rural-specific strategy needed? Not only does rural crime have specific characteristics, too often it happens out of sight and perhaps out of mind of the often metropolitan policymaker.
This concerns three related themes, the first of which is isolation. Rural homes and businesses are often isolated, making them vulnerable to crime, including violent and destructive crime, while the motorway network provides a rapid and anonymous escape route. A more recent phenomenon is the use, from the highway, of drones to scope out machinery or products for later theft —something we will return to with Amendment 486A. The police generally do their best to engage with the local community—I pay tribute to Leicestershire’s Neighbourhood Link scheme, which is local to me—but, on an area basis, police resources are spread very thinly.
The second theme is waste dumping, which has been touched on. There has at last started to be some press coverage of the large-scale and often toxic waste dumped by the lorryload at illegal waste dumps in the countryside, of which a growing number are now being recognised. Anywhere that a vehicle can pull over out of sight for just a few moments, there is constant fly-tipping of discarded furniture, building materials, tyres and unwanted household goods—to say nothing of the endless food wrappers, beer cans, bottles and seemingly ubiquitous Red Bull cans, which now form a continuous linear rubbish dump along the base of almost every rural hedgerow in my area. There is also the widespread dumping and then setting alight of stolen cars. Imagine the effect in a field of wheat when that happens.
I would also like the Committee to note that, in responding to a series of Written Questions from me, Defra—the “ra” does stand for “rural affairs”—has confirmed that it has no current obligation to address these matters beyond the immediate edge of national highways. Criminals know this, of course, and exploit it by driving up rural tracks or into fields to tip their waste.
The third theme is wider rural crime. I recently spoke to a farming family who, against everything they believe in, kill all the hares on their land every year. Why? Because, if they do not, violent gangs in four-wheel drive vehicles come and deliberately crash through their hedgerows, career across their crops and kill the hares on their land with dogs. Such “coursing”, as it is called, in some cases involves international criminal syndicates betting large sums on the outcome.
I could go on: churches are stripped of their roofs, there are armed gangs of violent poachers, raids and threats at village shops and post offices and widespread vandalism and theft. In short, rural areas are under siege from people who, with either criminal intent or anti-social indifference, are turning what we like to portray as a green and pleasant land into a rubbish-strewn hinterland whose population increasingly fear for their safety, livelihoods and property. That is why we need this amendment: to recognise that rural areas have specific characteristics, specific types of crime and an overall lack of focus, despite the best efforts of an overstretched police force.
Finally, I will refer briefly to the Minister’s answers to questions on the Statement on the police reform White Paper on Tuesday evening. He was asked a question on how rural policing would be covered. His reply was that the Government were looking at reviewing the funding formula and that the overall organisational model would include responsible, non-elected persons. I do not wish to express a view on the reforms, but I respectfully point out that he did not say anything about how rural areas would be affected by the reform.
Secondly, in response to a question on waste crime, the Minister said that organised crime was behind it—he was correct, of course—and that regional and national agencies would be looking “over time” at how to deal with serious organised crime. I suggest to him that a dedicated, rural-focused strategy is needed to prevent and tackle such crime, not just the Environment Agency, which largely deals with post-facto matters.
There needs to be a specific strategy to develop and enforce appropriate countermeasures to what is not a passing rural crime wave but a rising flood. I commend the amendment for highlighting this and I hope that the Minister and the Government will get behind it.