Freight Crime

This has to stop. This type of crime can often be violent, with organised gangs targeting drivers sleeping in lay-bys, as they know that is when they are most vulnerable to theft. In February 2024, five men threatened a driver in an Essex lay-by with a handgun before stealing his cargo, leaving the driver terrified. Despite an extensive area search, the police did not identify any suspects. Similarly, in West Yorkshire, last summer, thieves threatened a driver with a hammer and stole £250,000-worth of products from the vehicle. Once again, no one was caught.

Freight criminals are also becoming ever more sophisticated. They target warehouses where they know high-value goods will be stored and have stolen trailers laden with laptops, household appliances and medical supplies from transport hubs right across the midlands. Organised freight criminals seize opportunities of goods shortages to target cargo that is increasing in value, such as baby formula and personal protective equipment during the pandemic. In a particularly cruel case, freight criminals stole more than £1 million-worth of Government-funded laptops meant for deprived children. Luckily, three men were caught and sent to prison.

As a House, we must understand that organised freight crime feeds into other organised crime, where gangs have a large underground network of handlers who reintroduce large amounts of stolen cargo for the public to buy. Stolen cargo has even ended up on our supermarket shelves.

Staggeringly, in the most extreme and dangerous examples, freight criminals can even steal from moving vehicles. Last year, a heavy goods vehicle was driving to Hinckley, when the driver realised that the lock had been cut while he was driving and that more than £3 million-worth of smartphones, watches and laptops had been stolen. This type of operation, where criminal gangs drive erratically to target and tailgate a moving vehicle, is dangerous to everyone on the road.

Police in Warwickshire know that freight crime is becoming increasingly organised, targeted and dangerous, yet they are struggling to track and tackle it effectively because an organised gang stealing thousands of pounds-worth of goods from a lorry and someone stealing a mobile phone from the passenger seat of a car are coded in the same way. I am sure that that does not make sense to anyone in this House. That is why this Bill is needed.

The Bill would create a separate crime code for freight theft from a vehicle. With this specific code and classification, large-scale thefts of freight goods would be categorised differently, allowing police to respond to them as organised and targeted freight theft, rather than them being lumped together with domestic car break-ins and other car crime. This change would help police to deal with incidents more effectively in real time. Call handlers would be able to ask specific questions and follow responses and procedures specific to freight crime, allowing police to respond to incidents faster and more appropriately, stopping incidents and patterns slipping through the cracks.

It would also mean we could collect meaningful data. At the moment, the majority of data on freight crime is put together by the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Police Service, an organisation that receives no Government funding. Police forces currently do not have to report their freight crime incidents, so there are counties for which we have no data at all on how much freight crime is taking place. A separate crime code would mean all police forces could track freight crime instances, target freight crime hotspots in their county and create a national strategy with other police forces to chase down perpetrators across counties.

The Bill will improve police effectiveness when dealing with organised freight criminals and help us to tackle the problem and come up with a national freight crime strategy. Almost 20% of workers in North Warwickshire and Bedworth work in the freight and logistics sector, and they should not have to feel scared and threatened while doing their jobs. Freight and logistics businesses, which quite literally keep our country running, should not have to shoulder regular losses because of cargo theft; the police should not be hamstrung in tackling serious organised crime because they cannot retrieve the data they need to co-ordinate a national freight strategy; and ordinary consumers should not be left to pick up the bill. Organised freight crime gangs have been left to grow for too long, but this simple change should help to stop them in their tracks. It is time we took tougher action on freight crime, introduced a new freight crime code and put these thieves behind bars, where they belong.

That Rachel Taylor, Shaun Davies, Sarah Coombes, David Burton-Sampson, Kirith Entwistle, Catherine Fookes, Christine Jardine, Antonia Bance, Mrs Sureena Brackenridge, Alex Ballinger, Sarah Edwards and Josh Newbury present the Bill.

Rachel Taylor accordingly presented the Bill.