Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord De Mauley and Lord Sandhurst

Committee stage
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 20A, 21A and 23A.

As we have heard, Amendment 20A is a probing amendment to do with advice. Always leaving persons where there is reason to suspect an act of terrorism is occurring or about to occur is not necessarily the right course. You need to have procedures in place which not only prevent leaving but give advice about what to do—it might be to leave or not to leave. If we are going to have specific terms in the Act, it should be clear that the broader picture is encompassed. It could be construed as being simply advice about leaving. At present, on one reading at least, it is too inflexible.

I move on to Amendment 21A. To reduce the risk of reasonable harm is, I suggest, too bold and too bald. Is any risk, however small, to be encompassed by this, to make it even smaller? You will never make any risk negligible. Is any harm, however modest, to be encompassed? What is being guarded against? There is nothing to detract from the purpose here. It is simply to make it workable in real life. We must be sensible about imposing what is, in effect, strict liability for unforeseen circumstances. That is why we suggest that there should be an assessment of the risk, cost and outcome, and proportionality.

Amendment 23A is simply to give a clear time. Currently, I suggest, the words “reasonably practicable” are too vague. They could lead to arguments. It would be better to set an end date. Is it once the document is prepared that it should be provided or is it the time in which to prepare it? To me, reading this, it was not clear. There has to be reasonable time to prepare it and there has to be a time limit after that for providing it. Really, there should be an end date in any event for providing it, which should be clear; in other words, you have a reasonable time to do things but it must be done within three months, six months or whatever is the right time. That is the purpose of this.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 22 is in my name. I am sure we all recognise the threat that the Bill seeks to address and do not underestimate its importance. The attack on the Manchester Arena was, frankly, awful and we must do everything we can to prevent such things happening in future. However, in doing so, we surely must not inadvertently stamp out important local and cultural community-enhancing opportunities for people to enjoy themselves in times when, frankly, there is not much joy to be had.

At Second Reading, the Minister said, I think at column 646, two things which particularly concerned me. First, he referred to “public protection” even in the case of an event attended by as few as 200 people. He referred to “evacuation”, “invacuation”—apparently a word in the Bill drafters’ lexicon, if no one else’s—“lockdown” and “communication”. I will examine “lockdown” in a moment.

Secondly, the Minister expanded on the wording in Clause 6(3)(b), which refers to

“measures relating to … the movement of individuals into, out of and within the premises or event”,

and he added the words,

“such as search and screening processes”.

Let me illustrate my concerns by reference to two different types of event.

First, I help run one of hundreds, probably thousands, of annual parish and village charity fundraising events around the country. Ours, like countless others, is knocking on the door of becoming a qualifying event. We have assessed the risk of attack carefully, and already we have in place sensible precautions. The area is surrounded by walls, so a vehicle could not get near the crowd. A bomb or gun attack, although of course awful, would be highly unlikely, as the target is low value and, furthermore, the event is conducted in the open air, so a bomb would be vastly less effective than in a building with a roof and walls. When I spoke on Amendment 11, I referred to the fact that all 15 attacks listed in the impact assessment took place in urban areas.

I turn now to lockdown. Incidentally, it appeared from PMQs today that the Prime Minister himself does not fully understand the concept of lockdown. But the noble Lord the Minister said in the context of this Bill that it is

“the process of securing premises to restrict or prevent entry by an attacker by, for example, locking doors or closing shutters”.—[Official Report, 7/1/25; col. 646.]

How does he recommend that we in our village event would exercise lockdown? The event is outdoors, not in a building. There are no doors to lock or shutters to put down. Yes, the area is surrounded by walls, but they would not keep out a determined attacker if there was such a hypothetical person. So we will be required to have in place the ability to lock ourselves down but we are, in practical terms, unable to. There is genuinely very little likelihood of an attack but, when the Bill comes into effect, we will be obliged to do something that I cannot yet understand how to achieve.

Similarly, I have grave concerns about the implications of the Minister’s reference to “search and screening processes”. It is important that he explains what he means by “search and screening”. Does it mean full-body scanning, for which each unit costs several hundred thousand pounds and daily rental costs are several thousand pounds? Does he mean having a hand-held metal detector passed over attendees’ bodies? Even those, to be effective and not the knock-off ones of the kind one can buy on the internet, cost thousands of pounds. Does he mean that bags are to be searched? Exactly what does he mean?

At the event I am contemplating, the imposition of the requirement to search or scan guests, as referred to by the Minister at col. 646, could be so costly that it would be an additional reason that we could no longer hold our event, which last year—admittedly an exceptional year—will have given more than £5,000 to local charities and village schools. Is closing us down really what the Government want to do?

The impact assessment estimates the 10-year cost to enhanced duty premises at £52,093. It is not clear whether that would be the same for a qualifying event, but it does not look far off to me. That is just over £5,000 a year, which would kill off very many such events. In the debate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, referred to his concerns that costs should not unduly constrain events such as those I am concerned about, and I hope that His Majesty’s Government think the same.

Secondly, I am involved with a major annual rural open-air sporting event. There are many similar events around the United Kingdom through the year, including agricultural shows, Eisteddfods, game fairs, horse trials and shows, music and literary festivals, Guy Fawkes Night events, Green Man—the list is long. These are not small affairs, yet many are run on a shoestring and, in recent years, several have already been lost.

In the case of the event I am involved with, the main issues are the same as those I referred to earlier: lockdown, and scanning and searching. The viewing public arrive in cars along narrow country roads with already very long queues. In practical terms, it would be impossible to search all the cars as they arrive. Depending on the direction from which they approach, traffic control decrees that they are directed to a number of car parks that surround the event on all sides. There being no suitable natural barriers, it would also be impracticable to funnel the crowds, once on their feet, so that they can be searched individually as they move into the event area.

Many of these events run at little more than break even, so the cost of barriers to funnel the crowds, combined with that of searching and scanning equipment and manpower, is likely to mean that they would not survive.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord De Mauley and Lord Sandhurst

Committee stage
Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I can be quite short on this. The purpose of this amendment is to address the use of the words “from time to time” in the context of defining the premises to which the obligations will apply—whether from time to time 200 or more individuals may be present or, in the case of the enhanced duty, 800. It is a probing amendment. I acknowledge straight away that “not less than once a month” may not be the right definition, but there had to be something, and “from time to time”, I suggest, is simply too vague.

Is it to be once a year? If you have an event every year, that is “from time to time”. As is presently defined, the premises are caught if

“it is reasonable to expect that”

a given number of individuals may be present “from time to time”. An annual event might be caught, but what happens if it is just someone who does something from time to time? As a lawyer, I am very uncomfortable with this, and I can see the arguments that lawyers much cleverer than me will produce.

The premises are ordinarily qualifying premises only in the sense that they have a capacity of 200 or 250, but they may have an annual day to which 750 come one year and 900 come another. Will that come into this category? They may even have an annual day to which a bit over 800 might be expected. If that is so, the full panoply of the Act will fall: not just to the qualifying premises events but to the enhanced premises events. It is important to be clear about what you want to catch, who will be subject to enhanced obligations, and what is proportionate and necessary to keep people as safe as we reasonably can without creating unnecessary barriers and boundaries. I ask the Government simply to look very carefully at the words, “from time to time”, and to consider whether a better definition could be employed.

Amendment 11 suggests a provision that, where premises are

“assessed as low risk by an independent safety assessor”,

they are to be

“exempt from the duties imposed under this Act”—

in other words, you can have an opt-out. It might be that that would be applicable only to lower categories of events, but it is certainly worth looking at. If you have a good record, you would not do it tomorrow. However, in a year or two, everyone will have experience of how this works—the regulator will have that experience—and, if they see that a given place is well regulated and well run, it will not need to be within the full panoply of the Act.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, despite supporting the Bill in general, I strongly support Amendment 11, which I will speak to. An assessment of risk, which is generally agreed to be appropriate in all aspects of modern life, seems to be absent from the Bill. Any premises or event, regardless of the real risk of it being attacked, must take a series of potentially very costly precautions.

It is worth noting that of the 15 terrorist attacks to which the impact assessment seems to refer as the main basis for the Bill, six were in London, two in Manchester and one in Liverpool, and all were in urban areas. In fact, all of them were in areas that had tarmac underneath them; not a single one was in a rural area. Does that suggest that it is right to treat events in rural settings as being as high risk as those in urban areas? It is like applying 20 miles per hour speed limits throughout the entire country: it might marginally improve safety, but at a cost of bringing the economy to its knees. In their search for economic growth, is this really what the Government want? I urge them to introduce a little good sense and allow there to be an assessment of risk in these situations.