Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I do not want to pour cold water on the proposal as it seems to be getting a lot of support, and I support the principle of it. I am very taken with some of the simple measures that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, outlined. However, they are not all simple measures. I have been on local authorities and seen how planners can get carried away with some of their proposals. All of a sudden, we are into not simple proposals such as those we have heard about today, but much more elaborate ones that would be impossible for the business or the community centre to implement.

We need to be careful about the proposal. I am happy with the principle, but the outworking could be much more difficult. I say in response to my noble friend Lord Brookeborough, let us not forget that a lot of the buildings in Northern Ireland that were protected against terrorist attacks were public buildings. That money was coming from central funds, not community organisations, churches, local football clubs or sports clubs.

I support the principle of this proposal, but I urge some caution as well.

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, I think that this amendment has a lot of merit. It certainly raises some very important issues. Ahead of this Bill, I met with people from the insurance industry. They very much made the point that time and money could be saved by incorporating some of these security provisions at the design phase of public buildings.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made a very powerful case for why this amendment would make sense. Clearly, retrospectively trying to put in measures for effective and safe evacuations and invacuations is frequently going to be harder and less cost-effective than building them in at the planning and architectural design stage for new public buildings. As others have hinted, this amendment is perhaps not for this Bill but for a future planning Bill, but it raises a common-sense and important set of issues. I look forward to Minister’s reply.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, my two colleagues mentioned the situation in Northern Ireland. The Minister will be very familiar, from his service there, with a lot of this. A lot of the protections that were put in place were against blast. Terrorist tactics have changed and will continue to change. You cannot simply look at what the threat might have been 30 or 40 years ago: look at the threat that we face today, but in 10 years or 20 years, it may be very different.

The trick will be to have flexible thinking going into the actual design, so although the nature of the threat will change over time there will at least be a bit of future-proofing—that is the language we would need to use. All those lessons should be learned. I served on the Northern Ireland Police Authority, which had to deal with the threats to buildings in those circumstances and to other Civil Service facilities. The Minister will be very familiar with all that. The key is for those who design or adapt buildings—because more buildings are going to be adapted than built from scratch—to show a bit of flexibility in those processes and put a little thought into what might be coming down the road. Our buildings were largely protected against blast, which would not necessarily be the only thing that is at risk.