For too long, smaller businesses have been the poor relation of crime victims in England and Wales. Yet the amount of crime perpetrated against smaller businesses is quite simply staggering. So says Neil Sharpley, Home Affairs Policy Committee Chair at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), opening a report on business crime.
He writes that the vast majority of smaller businesses have taken at least one ‘deterrent’ measure to protect themselves against traditional and/or cybercrime. “But they cannot achieve success on their own. They urgently need the Government to ensure sufficient funding and resources to improve police capability and capacity. The recent Government announcement of an extra 20,000 police officers is a welcome step in the right direction. However, this does not bring England and Wales up to the European average number of police per 100,000 people. Significant extra funding would be needed to achieve that.”
A table in the report notes England and Wales with 212 police per 100,000 population is well behind Scotland (322), the Republic of Ireland (278) and the likes of Germany (297), let alone Northern Ireland with a figure of 382.
He calls for improved data collection on business crime, as ‘the essential building block for the design of better policy interventions’. He urges also a simplified and consistent definition of business crime, a single online reporting hub for all non-emergency crime (whereas Action Fraud is ‘widely recognised as ineffective’) and a commitment to a regular, comprehensive business crime survey, on the lines of the Crime Survey for England and Wales. He says that Police and Crime Commissioners have not been game changers in terms of law enforcement doing more to tackle crime threats to local business communities. “That is why we are calling on Government to introduce a code of practice which sets out a performance framework for PCCs.”
And he suggests a review of the division of responsibilities of British police. Local forces overseen by a PCC remain central, he says. “But it is clear that cybercrime and fraud require a critical-mass of resources, expertise and coordination that a mosaic of local forces are unable to provide.”
The report draws on the experiences and views of FSB members, such as complaints that PCCs pay only lip-service to crime against businesses; and that police ‘aren’t bothered about the guy who had his tools nicked’.
Significantly, the report points to underlying causes of crime as ‘social pathologies’ that need acting on; ‘across multiple dimensions including parenting, familial and wider relationships, school, educational experience and attainment, employment opportunities and substance misuse’. That would ‘require a long-term (perhaps generational) approach’. For now, the report states that it’s ‘increasingly clear that the police in England and Wales do not have the manpower to deal with the levels of crime they face’, including against businesses. FSB focus groups found it widely accepted that the police are under-resourced. FSB members asked for ‘more local, problem-solving community policing’, and incentives to have cyber hygiene, such as from insurers.
Given police competing priorities, the report notes that counter-terrorism policing and some organised crime policing is funded separately by central government. This principle could be built upon further. But the report does not ask for special treatment for businesses; in its conclusion it states that ‘crime against business is high and there is little focus on it by law enforcement … the police and PCCs have chosen not to prioritise it’. What the report terms ‘robust data about crime against businesses’, and an annual business crime survey, would help bring about a ‘proportionate resourcing of policing’ as response to such crime, given the wider impact that crime has upon businesses, besides the physical stock loss or damage; to livelihoods.
For the full 56-page report by the FSB’s Richard Hyde, Senior Policy Advisor for Home Affairs and Regulation, visit the FSB website.
Separately, the FSB was among organisations backing the second phase of the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, as launched by the French Government, during the two-day the Paris Peace Forum.
