Rural Crime and Public Services — House of Commons, 2018-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Caroline Elizabeth Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for that important intervention. He rightly says that the fines are not proportionate, and indeed our next all-party group meeting will be with the Solicitor General to discuss the impacts of sentencing on rural crime. The dogs themselves can be worth very much more than £250 and some of the bets are for £10,000 or more. My right hon. Friend makes reference to Operation Galileo, a Lincolnshire police initiative masterminded by Bill Skelly and Marc Jones, our Conservative PCC. It has had great success in Lincolnshire, with the number of incidents having gone down from 2,000 to 1,400. The police credit that 600 fall to two initiatives, the first of which is the institution of criminal behaviour orders, whereby people convicted of hare coursing are no longer allowed to be in a vehicle and in possession of a lurcher-style dog, or in the company of others with such an animal, in Lincolnshire. However, Lincolnshire police can catch these people but they can then go to Cambridgeshire or North Yorkshire to do the same thing. I therefore ask the Minister to consider the possibility of allowing courts to impose such an order covering a wider geographical area, so that the Cambridgeshire police do not then have to catch these people, then the North Yorkshire police have to do the same, and so on. These orders could apply in other areas as soon as someone has been caught once The main initiative that has brought about the success is the seizing of dogs, because, as I say, the dog is what is valuable to these criminals. Taking the dog from them means they are not able to pursue their crime; these dogs are trained to do what they are doing. Tackling the crime is expensive; we have seen the crime fall in Lincolnshire, but I understand from our PCC that dog kennelling fees have cost £46,000 this year. There is currently no provision in law to reclaim that money from the criminal once they have been prosecuted, so I ask the Minister to consider whether he can add a clause into law that would allow the kennelling fees to be reclaimed from the criminal after their conviction. That would be only fair and reasonable In her opening speech, the Minister mentioned that there was no definition of rural crime, but police tell me that intelligence and evidence-based policing is hampered by the fact that they do not have some of the data that they need. I therefore ask her to consider better and more detailed recording of crime—heating oil theft and hare coursing are not always specifically recorded—so that we can identify where these crimes are taking place and target them much more effectively The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) mentioned fear. Nobody should experience fear in their own home. People have a right to feel safe as well as to be safe. In an isolated setting, however, it is perhaps understandable that people do not always feel that way. If a person is attacked in their flat, or if someone comes into their home, or they feel unsafe, they can scream, run outside and seek help relatively quickly. If someone is in an isolated rural farmhouse, more than a mile from the nearest property, it is understandable that the response time from the police and from any member of the public will be much slower. That would leave them feeling much more isolated. I have great admiration for the work of Lincolnshire police, especially the way that they police a large geographical area, with 6,000 miles of road and a widely dispersed population. It is a credit to them that our crime level is among the lowest in the entire country, but money is an issue. Lincolnshire police has one of the lowest levels of funding in the country. I understand the point that there is only so much money and that it has to be shared out somehow, but we receive the least amount of funding for a service that is more difficult and more expensive to deliver because of the area that the police have to cover. Moreover, a particularly high proportion of our money is funded locally. I agree with my hon. Friends who have said that it is reasonable for some of the money to come from local sources as it is directed back locally, and for some of it to come from central Government grant. However, at the moment, there are areas of the country, particularly urban areas, where the local population is being asked to contribute around 25% of the money that is used for the overall policing budget in their area, and yet in Lincolnshire, it is 43%, and I understand that in North Yorkshire it is closer to 50%. We need greater fairness. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking into how we can make police funding much fairer in the future, and I will be happy to support them in doing so.