Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Moynihan. Notwithstanding what my noble friend Lord De Mauley just said about pursing his amendment later, I support the sentiment behind it.

In another Bill before your Lordships’ House, the Football Governance Bill, we are looking at the implications for football clubs, particularly those at the lower end of the pyramid. I was therefore attracted to what my noble friend Lord Moynihan said and what his amendment seeks to do by looking at venues with a capacity of under 10,000—the sports grounds and stadia which attract a smaller number of people but still have sizeable crowds. As we discussed in the previous group, they are run by volunteers as much as, and indeed often more so, than full-time staff, with all the implications of that.

My noble friend, in talking about the London Marathon and the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, brought a number of important examples of sporting events which take place in both private establishments and in public. The growing interest in the parkrun movement springs to mind as another example. I would be grateful if the Minister could say a bit more about whether those more informal but regular sporting events which attract large numbers of people would be covered by the Bill, and if so, how.

I certainly agree with what my noble friend Lord Moynihan said in his concluding remarks. It will be very important to have some guidance here. I said at Second Reading that some more sector-specific guidance is needed. My noble friend’s suggestion of working with DCMS, on behalf of the many and varied sectors which that department has the pleasure of working with, would be very valuable because that can get us into some of the minutiae that my noble friend’s speech just set out. Those minutiae are very important, as the organisations and volunteers that run events are grappling with the duties the Bill will impose upon them.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lord Moynihan. I wish to ask the Minister two questions that arise on this topic that I have found in the impact assessment.

At paragraph 68, there is a description of the enforcement regime in relation to the provisions in the Bill:

“Enforcement will be delivered via a mainly civil sanctions regime”.


In respect of a standard duty premises, we can see that there is a fixed penalty and an ability for the regulator to impose a fixed penalty of £500 per day from the date on which the

“penalty is due until the date the contravention is rectified or the notice is withdrawn by the Regulator”.

There is furthermore a power, in the most “egregious cases” according to the impact assessment, of a criminal prosecution of the relevant person. My first question picks up on a theme in an earlier group. To what extent does the Minister think this will have an impact on volunteering and the willingness of people to take on roles where they would be responsible for facing such enforcement?

My second question is in relation to the funding estimates in the impact assessment. One can see, in paragraph 98 on page 23 of the impact assessment, there is a description of how it is that the civil servants have reached their valuation of what the Bill is going to cost. In the previous paragraph, they discuss the impact of outdoor festivals, but in paragraph 98 they say that outdoor events other than festivals

“have not been included in the analysis. These events are not included due to the absence of specific and accurate data about the number of events and their respective capacities. This lack of a comprehensive list of these events means that a reliable estimate of the number of events could not be made. Therefore, outdoor events other than festivals have been excluded from the appraisal analysis”.

I suggest to the Committee that this is simply not good enough. This is an impact assessment which tells us on its first page that the possible financial impact of these measures is somewhere between £1.8 billion, which is the best case, and £4.9 billion. To simply exclude the valuation from outdoor events because no attempt can be made to assess how many people may attend is simply not good enough. We can see this is a policy that has been developed without the needs of the kinds of small sports grounds that my noble friend has identified. Would the Minister agree that the common-sense position would be to consider excluding completely these kinds of small sporting venues from the operation of the Bill?