Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Viscount Brookeborough

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I associate myself the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about counterterrorism security advisers. They are part of this defence mechanism; they certainly need to be better resourced and could do a great deal as a consequence.

The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, are extremely important and have great value; they reflect the comments that I made in my two reports on prevention of terrorism in London. A great deal can be done to design out different sorts of crime, or, as in this case, to make it more difficult for terrorists to act, or to make it easier to respond to a terrorist incident. I do not wish to prolong the discussion, because there is an issue as to whether this is the right legislation. Clearly, it needs to be considered in the context of the planning system, but I also take the point about that perhaps taking an inordinate amount of time, rather than trying to move this forward at this stage.

If I may inject a slightly partisan point at this stage, I do recall, at a lower level, the issues around designing out crime. At one stage, a whole series of recommendations were in the building regulations to make crime more difficult—for example, making it more difficult for burglars to kick in doors. The previous Government dismantled all that, which was extremely unfortunate.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I wonder whether the Minister and the advisers have been to Northern Ireland, where, for a long time, buildings have been designed for the exact threats he is talking about. I am not sure of the system, but I do not think that those designs originated from planning control or building control; they were brought on by the organisations themselves in order to provide protection. There must be lessons to be learned there on how best to stop these sorts of attacks; after all, although I hesitate to say it, we were under them for 40 years.

On the subject of the various organisations, including the SIA, we can point people in the right direction and get advice to them, but resources will have to be put into the communications between people and those organisations. The advice may be there but currently, there is not the manpower to communicate to the extent that will ward off terrorist attacks.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Viscount Brookeborough

Committee stage
Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I too recognise that inevitably we have got to fix a figure, and that is for this House and/or another place to do. I would just like to say one thing about Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murray, where he says,

“if smaller, the Secretary of State determines”.

One has to see the reality of that, which is that this would probably happen anyway—although I support his amendment—to the extent that how or why would the Secretary of State intervene? He would intervene only because of intelligence.

We have to remember that it is not just what we all think in here. Our intelligence services have kept us safe—touch wood—we are told from many planned incidents over the last few years. Therefore, regardless of the number being six or 800, we rely on them to come through and tell us where the threat is. We have been talking about whether it is a small premises that is attractive to terrorists or a large one, or whether it is a significant name of an event or whether it is the people attending. They will go first to find a target that will gain them the maximum amount of attention. They then say, according to what happened with us and I am sorry to go back to it, “Which one is easy for us to go for?”.

We cannot decide that in here. But we must put the numbers down. I agree with Amendment 8 from the point of view that it recognises that the Secretary of State must have the power to intervene on any event, and not just necessarily the Secretary of State but the police and the intelligence that leads to some form of action on it. So I do support the amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased that we are having this debate. I am not going to decry the three previous groups, but this actually comes to the nub of what I suspect what this Committee stage will be about.

I listened very carefully to what the noble Viscount just said. I have to say that it is quite possible that, under any set of circumstances, the police or the security service will have identified a high risk. Under those circumstances, I hope they would intervene and I hope the organisers would take it extremely seriously and respond—and actually, I suspect that in every single case they would. But the fundamental issue, which is raised by this set of amendments, is not what is the burden of this but what is the risk appetite that the people who are organising this event, and that we as a nation have, about the event concerned?

Every organisation, when it considers its risk register, will consider its risk appetite: what are we prepared or not prepared to tolerate? This figure is, of course, arbitrary. It could be 100; my personal belief is that it should have remained as 100, but the Government consulted very widely, listened to the views that were expressed and came up with this number. So we are presented with 200. A terrorist attacking a premises of 199 is potentially going to kill a very significant number—as many as were killed at the Manchester Arena. They may not be able to injure quite as many as at the Manchester Arena, but they could cause immense damage.