← Back to Westminster Hall Debates
Vehicle Theft
08 September 2026
Lead MP
Liz Jarvis
Responding Minister
Sarah Jones
Tags
Migrants & BordersPolicing & ResourcesCrime & Law EnforcementUkraineEconomyNHS
Word Count: 3563
Other Contributors: 3
At a Glance
Liz Jarvis raised concerns about vehicle theft in Westminster Hall. A government minister responded.
Key Requests to Government:
Jarvis asked the Government to review the connection between right to repair legislation and vehicle security to combat vehicle theft. She also urged the Government to ensure that the neighbourhood policing guarantee results in a real increase in frontline officers. Jarvis further requested the setting up of police front desks in every community to improve crime reporting and investigation.
How the Debate Unfolded
MPs spoke in turn to share their views and ask questions. Here's what each person said:
Lead Contributor
Opened the debate
Liz Jarvis highlighted that since the start of 2025, 115,448 instances of vehicle theft have been recorded across England and Wales, with a 75% increase over the past decade. She mentioned that vehicle theft occurs every four minutes and that the methods used have become more sophisticated, such as relay theft and controller area network bus injection. Jarvis also noted that the impact of these crimes extends beyond the monetary loss, affecting the emotional and physical wellbeing of victims. She shared specific incidents from her constituency, including cases of NHS workers and tradespeople who lost their means of transportation and livelihood.
Thanks the Member for the debate and discusses the high rate of vehicle theft in Northern Ireland, advocating for a layered approach to vehicle security, including making vehicles harder to steal, easier to trace and recover, and less attractive to target.
Jim Shannon
DUP
Strangford
Commends the debate and highlights the dangers of aggravated vehicle theft in Northern Ireland, citing a specific case of a stolen police car used in an attempted murder. Calls for harsher penalties to deter such offences.
Notes a 13.6% decrease in vehicle thefts in the West Midlands since 2022-23, but stresses the need for continued efforts to make vehicles harder to steal and work with the police and manufacturers.
Government Response
Sarah Jones
Government Response
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for securing the debate. I start by thanking the National Police Chiefs' Council lead in this area, Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame, and her colleague Oli Fisher, who lead the work nationally on our response to vehicle crime. Vehicle crime soared in the 1970s and 1980s, but there was then a big fall as new technology designed out vehicle theft and vehicle crime. As the hon. Member suggested, it then increased over about the last 10 years, although it has dropped over the last two. That is partly because of some of the disruption the police have been able to do. Ridiculously, issues such as the strait of Hormuz also make a difference, because vehicles are often shipped abroad when they are stolen. Just as global trade is interrupted, global criminals are interrupted when there are big global shifts such as those in Iran. There are multiple reasons, but numbers have gone down over the past two years. At the moment, several bodies are looking at how to solve the problem. There are local police forces; the hon. Member pointed to numbers of police officers, and we are committed to putting 13,000 more police in our neighbourhoods. In her area, there are 88 more full-time neighbourhood officers than when we came to power, on the streets and policing our neighbourhoods in the way she would expect. Large criminal gangs are driving the changing nature of vehicle crime. Cars are stolen, using the technology in the way she explained, and then shipped abroad and sold on. Neighbourhood policing is an important part of the picture, but we need to address large criminal gangs nationally. Some bodies are doing really good work in this area. The National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service, which is financed by the private sector, does some of the work opening containers at ports, and there is more we can do in that space if cars are stolen and taken abroad. The hon. Member referred to Opal, which is the NPCC intelligence unit, and the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership has been in place for about two years. We in the Home Office give it £1 million, but is funded by the private sector. The fundamental problem with serious organised crime that is not drugs, guns or very high-harm crime is that quite often a car will be stolen in one place and taken somewhere else. It might go to a port or pass through three or four different forces, but because of the nature of the 43 police forces, the system is not joined up. Our reform programme will help with those kinds of serious, specialist crime. When we have a national police service responsible for serious organised crime, which brings together the different national agencies and oversees a more regional structure of policing, with local policing units that are responsible to their local communities at the bottom, that will enable the forces to flex those specialisms more where they need to be. Our organised crime strategy needs to look at drugs and guns and at very high-harm crimes such as people-smuggling, but while car theft is less high harm it has a huge cost. This is a very lucrative business for the criminals, and an expensive business for us. Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame will be able to tell us the annual cost, but it is something in the order of £1.7 billion. We need to look at this centrally, and the reform programme will help to tackle that challenge. At an Interpol conference last year or earlier this year—forgive me, I cannot recall—lots of countries came together to talk about this challenge. Lots of countries have the same problem: Canada, the Netherlands and Japan are net exporters of stolen vehicles. Those vehicles are taken to certain ports in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the United Arab Emirates, for example, and then sold on to other parts of the world. There are lots of problems with that network. For example, if a car enters Russia there are no checks on who owns it and whether it is stolen or not, so basically as soon as that car gets to Russia, off it goes. Some vehicles are sent into warzones, such as Ukraine, via nearby countries, and the more high-end vehicles are sold on to be used in other countries in the normal way. There is a pattern that we are increasingly understanding, but the question is how we disrupt it. Part of the answer is through the legislation we have introduced, which is a good first step. Some of the kit that criminals use, such as a device that logs into a vehicle, can cost £30,000 to £50,000; these are obviously serious organised criminals who have the money to buy such kit. We now have the legislation, although it has not been enacted yet; we have passed the law, but it has not commenced. Nevertheless, it will make a difference. I noted the hon. Lady's point about online platforms and the videos on them, and I will take that away. It was not something that I was well aware of, but I will definitely take it away as something to raise with the tech companies, alongside the very long list that we are raising with them of other dangerous things online that should be taken down. How do we work with manufacturers to design out vehicle crime and how do we ensure that the legislation is in place to disrupt vehicle crime as much as possible? In addition, there is a question about ports and how easy it is to get vehicles out of the country, which we need to look at. There is also the international picture and ensuring that we share information with police forces around the world, where we can. There is the central capability that I think we need as part of the national police service to ensure that we treat this crime with the seriousness it deserves. The hon. Lady talked about the impact that vehicle theft has on individuals and communities, and she is right. There are some similarities with the theft of mobile phones and how the police respond to that, which is evolving. For an extended period, more and more people had their phones stolen, with each theft being dealt with by a local police force individually as an individual crime. The Metropolitan police in particular put some of this information together and realised that organised criminal networks were taking these phones, wrapping them in silver foil, putting them on a plane, sending them to China and selling them on from there. We understood the criminal network involved, and the police are now targeting and trying to disrupt them in various ways. There is a similar picture with vehicle theft, and we need to respond to it in a similar way. As I have said, I think the reform programme will help with that. Of course we need to keep looking at new technology, new legislation and other things that we can do. I am very grateful to the police, who are already tackling this challenge, and I am particularly grateful to ACC Sarah Grahame, who is leading this work and pushing us in the Home Office to go further and do more. With the reform programme, we in the Home Office are trying to design a structure that not only enables the police to do their job but enables us to step back and not have to provide small bits of funding for each individual crime type, and instead give the police the resources in the right place to tackle the problem. There is some evidence—not lots, but some—that the criminals stealing cars and sending them abroad also take part in other organised criminality of a more dangerous kind, involving guns and drugs. We need to gather more intelligence on that, but it is often the case that criminals do not stick to one type of crime; they do lots of things all at the same time. There is probably a network of organised criminals we should target who are not only stealing cars and moving them abroad but doing other things that are more high harm. This debate has been a timely conversation on an issue that we in the Home Office are very alive to. We want to enable the police to respond to it. It is part of the changing nature of crime. People see a spate of car thefts in one area because the cars are stolen to order by serious and organised criminals who know what they are doing. They come into an area, they steal the cars there and they move on somewhere else, in part because they know that different police forces will not be joining up with each other, in the way that I described. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh again for securing this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Sureena Brackenridge) for raising the issues that her constituents are facing. Hopefully, what I have said today will reassure the hon. Lady that we are taking this issue very seriously, and I appreciate all suggestions and ideas as to what more we can do.
▸
Assessment & feedback
Summary accuracy
About Westminster Hall Debates
Westminster Hall debates are a chance for MPs to raise important issues affecting their constituents and get a response from a government minister. Unlike Prime Minister's Questions, these debates are more in-depth and collaborative. The MP who secured the debate speaks first, other MPs can contribute, and a minister responds with the government's position.