Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Baroness Manningham-Buller and Lord Murray of Blidworth

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, with some trepidation, I find myself leading the next group as well; I hope not to try the patience of the Committee. The Committee discussed similar suites of amendments in earlier groups. Amendment 40 is designed to seek to defray some of the costs of implementing measures made necessary by the effect of the Bill. As the Committee will have noted, it requires the Secretary of State to set up a tax relief scheme for qualifying investments. Those investments are set out at subsection (2), including

“surveillance … equipment … physical barriers and access control systems … staff training on counter-terrorism measures”,

and

“cyber-security infrastructure for venue security”.

We know that the costs of the measures in the Bill are estimated in the impact assessment at somewhere between £4.8 billion and £500 million, with the best estimate being £1.7 billion. If a measure similar to this were brought in, it would make cost-neutral to businesses the implementation of the measures in the Bill. Of course, there would be a cost to the Government, but this is, after all, a government policy.

My Amendment 45 seeks to do the same sort of thing but without the creation of a tax incentive. It would require the Secretary of State to provide grants or funding schemes for voluntary and community organisations. This amendment goes to my earlier group of amendments, seeking to mitigate the impact on voluntary and community organisations. This is quite similar to the debate about general funding that the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Suttie, spoke to on the last day of Committee. I will not expound at length on that now, but I would be grateful if the Minister could outline what consideration was given to providing financial support to voluntary and community organisations, whether the Home Office considered the Bill’s impact on volunteering and people wanting voluntarily to run village halls and community centres, the Home Office’s estimate of any impact on recruitment—or whether the issue was not considered at all. If the Minister does not have the answer to hand in his bundle, I would be very grateful if he wrote to me. I would also like the Minister to outline what discussions have been had, if any, with the Treasury on creating a tax scheme of the type I advocate in Amendment 40. I beg to move.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise in advance. The Minister will tick me off for this being a Second Reading intervention, and I should have been here on Monday to say it, but I would like briefly to give a small plug for an organisation that has not been mentioned at all at this stage: the National Protective Security Authority. This is an arm of MI5 which gives free advice on personnel security, physical security and other forms of security. It is informed by a knowledge of terrorist and state threats. It is based not only on the understanding of those threats but on commissioned research from universities. It will give advice for free—paid for by the taxpayer—to all sizes and shapes of organisation. When we are talking about the costs of this, and in the earlier stages about the so-called cowboys giving advice, I recommend that whoever is affected by this legislation looks at this website and seeks this free advice as their first step. I am sorry for the commercial plug and apologise for intervening at this stage.