Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. In particular, I shall speak to Amendments 21, 23 and 39, but I support the other one too. We have to remember that we have to uphold parliamentary sovereignty and democratic accountability. As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, explained, these are Henry VIII clauses. They will effectively bypass the scrutiny of Parliament. They will allow Ministers to change key aspects of public protection measures and to do so by means that should be employed only in exceptional circumstances.

This is particularly ironic in the light of two recent statements by this Government’s Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer. In his maiden speech in July last year, he said that the Government would

“seek to promote the highest standards in how we legislate”

and seek

“to increase … accessibility and certainty”.—[Official Report, 23/7/24; col. 372.]

in how we make law, including not abusing the use of secondary legislation—I remind the House of that. On 22 November, in the Attorney-General’s 2024 Bingham Lecture, he addressed the erosion of the separation of powers and the usurpation—his word—of parliamentary sovereignty and judicial authority. He stressed the importance of the separation of powers and public confidence in democratic institutions.

In the present instance, we have procedures in the Bill that have been carefully considered and subject to full scrutiny. They will have been endorsed by both Houses of Parliament upon the Bill’s passage; that will be put to one side if they are then changed by regulation. Such sweeping powers undermine legal certainty; they are simply not appropriate in this instance. If we are to have effective measures—we have looked at the detail and found that these measures must have everyone working together to be effective: members of the public, the police, the emergency services and the SIA—it is important that everyone feels bound in and supportive.

If, having been through a long and tough series of debates in these Houses, the primary legislation is then just put to one side by successive Secretaries of State, we have all wasted our time. The public will perceive that and there will be a serious loss of democratic accountability and confidence.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was glad to add my name to Amendment 21, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Ipswich and Lord Sandhurst, and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, and Amendments 23 and 38.

I am very concerned about what I consider to be the introduction of an anti-democratic part to this Bill, which is worrying and unnecessary in terms of delegated powers and secondary legislation. It opens up the potential for an overreach of powers in relation to the use of Henry VIII powers. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, explained brilliantly how the regulations can be amended in terms of the list of public protection procedures and measures that qualifying events and premises will be obliged to put in place. It feels as though that makes a mockery of the hours that we are spending here. I do not know why we are examining every line to ensure proportionality and those of us who raise concerns about overreach and so on are reassured that this will proceed carefully and not get out of hand, when all that could be wiped away with a pen stroke. Allowing this particular policy to be, potentially, reshaped to create further obligations on premises, venues and businesses and so on, fuels my fear of an excessive expansion of this policy and the aims of the Bill through regulation, without any of us having any oversight.

Those of us who worry about mission creep—or, what is more, who know the way in which the fear of terrorism and the call for safety have been used over many years as a potential restriction on freedom and civil liberties—will therefore at least want to pause and receive an adequate explanation of why on earth these Henry VIII powers are necessary if, as the Government assure us, this will not be a disproportionate Bill.

The regulator created by the Bill will already have immense powers to issue fines for non-compliance, restriction notices and so on. Many venues fear that this will kill them off financially; we have heard much testimony on that. There is already a sort of fear of God among many organisations associated with civil society and the public square, let alone the already decimated hospitality industry, about how they are to cope with the requirements of the Bill and to plan to deal with its requirements. It might well be argued that this is the price we pay for protecting the public, but that would be if they knew exactly what they had to do to plan for the Bill. These Henry VIII powers give the Secretary of State the power to make those threats to venues far more onerous. They cannot possibly plan for them.

This is all in a context in which a whole range of committees and consultations that have looked at this legislation have noted that there is no evidence that the measures listed in the Bill will have any effect on reducing the threat of terrorism, particularly in relation to smaller venues. One does not want to feel that we are in a situation of introducing legislation that could destroy businesses and aspects of civil society without evidence and that would allow the state to have ever-greater power in relation to surveillance—what those venues do and so on—just so that you can say to the public that you are protecting them, when in fact you might not be protecting them at all.

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments on delegated powers and the Henry VIII clauses is a key area of contention in the Bill. On behalf of these Benches, I have added my name to Amendments 21 and 38 in this group. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, they were beautifully and comprehensively introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, so I shall keep my remarks fairly brief.

It is true to say that the amendments in this group are now truly cross-party. I suspect that there are several noble Lords on the Government Benches who would rather agree with them too. I note in passing, as an observation of more than 11 years in your Lordships’ House, that parties tend to oppose Henry VIII clauses when they are sitting on the Opposition Benches, whereas they tend to introduce them once they are in government. If the previous draft Bill under the previous Government was perhaps too prescriptive, many of the concerns about this Bill now stem from the fact that it lacks clarity and leaves too much power in the hands of the Secretary of State, without parliamentary oversight. Like the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I very much agree with the Constitution Committee’s letter in that regard, in particular the sentence that says that

“delegated powers are not an appropriate route for policy change”.

I think that is a truism, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

As the Bill currently stands, we are concerned that there is too much power left in the hands of the Home Secretary. In particular, there is a risk that if at some point in the future, God forbid, there is a horrendous terrorist attack, the Government may feel under huge pressure to react and, indeed, sometimes potentially to overreact. In such circumstances, there is always a tremendous amount of pressure to respond to events. In those circumstances, it is all the more important that Parliament can debate such measures and that there is proper and full consultation with the sector.

As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said, Amendment 38 would require the Secretary of State to ensure that any change to the threshold would have to be justified by a change to the terrorist threat. We touched on this in earlier debates in Committee and it strikes me as a reasonable and common-sense approach. I hope that the Minister responds positively to these comments and concerns and that, if the Government feel unable to accept the amendments as currently drafted, they bring forward their own amendments before Report.

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[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of the amendments in this group, particularly that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. I have an interest to declare, in that I have 250 or 300 church buildings in my diocese that will come under the terms of the Bill when it is enacted.

I turn first to the provision of training. When, about 20 years ago, I first became a trustee of a large defined benefit pension scheme, it was quite scary, but I found that the Pensions Regulator provided me with training, which, as far I could work out, was free for me at the point of access. The principle that training should be provided and not just left to the private sector—to the snake-oil sales men or women, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, just referred to—is important, so that the state can provide good training or enable it to be provided. Similarly, back in 2000, I was involved with a group of friends when the asylum seeker dispersal scheme first began. I set up and won the contract for Yorkshire and the Humber to prove that this could be done morally and effectively, and not simply as a rent-seeking exercise at the expense of the asylum seeker.

State provision, ideally of a good standard that would drive up the quality of standards provided by alternative providers—the amendment does not say it all has to be done through the state—is much to be welcomed.

I recall the difference between volunteers and paid staff. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, said, for something that might be covered by one full-time staff member, it takes quite a number of volunteers, each giving small amounts of their time, to make happen. In my churches I have many volunteers—probably several thousand in the diocese of Manchester—who require DBS clearance for their work with children or vulnerable adults. The law is that those who are volunteers get the DBS clearance process for free; I have to pay for clergy and other paid staff of the diocese, but for volunteers it is provided free of charge. It is a good idea to find ways to help the many volunteers who enable small organisations, whether they are churches, heritage railways or small football clubs. My football club, Salford City, is in a rather lower league than the top two, but, again, there are many volunteers on duty to make sure that things are carried out properly.

I support the amendments in this group and hope that we can find some way of ensuring that good-quality training is provided that will avoid voluntary organisations in particular falling into the hands of those who will either charge them so much that they give up or exploit them for their own ends.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am genuinely torn and confused by this group of amendments. As this is Committee, I want to try to probe it a little because I do not know which way to go.

I was pleased that the Government listened to the consultations about training and, it seemed to me at least, dropped the notion of a one-size-fits-all approach. I thought that was commendable and still do. I know from my experience of organising events that at the same venue you can, for example, have different kinds of events that will have different requirements and need different types of training. I absolutely do not want to go against the idea of listening and thinking to ensure that training is not a source of problems for venues.

I also have a certain dread of training. Noble Lords have already noted that there are a lot of rackets about. When I looked into the original Martyn’s law provisions when they were proposed under the other Government, I saw how many adverts there were from consultants offering to prepare organisations for the legislative change. I got very anxious about that, because they were expensive and no one knew whether they were of the right calibre and so on. There was a worry that security firms in particular would make a packet. Having said that, it is the case that, inevitably, smaller organisations will not necessarily know how to do the training themselves and will turn to third parties.

I am not sure what I think about the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, but I think there is something in this. On the one hand, the thing which has worried most voluntary organisations is what they will do about training. I know from my work in the voluntary sector that a lot of volunteers are put off by the notion that they will all be sent off on safety training courses. It is the dread of your life: you are giving up your time for a good cause to help people, and you think, “Oh God, am I going to be jumping through those hoops?” On the other hand, it is understandable that smaller organisations are not going to have expert trainers on hand and so will need to bring in third parties. That is where one becomes unsure about what they are going to get, and there have been some suggestions in the amendments.

The other thing is that there has been quite a move to reassure venues that there will be signposting of suitable free training offers online. Those kinds of box-ticking exercises are really not worth even being free. There is a danger that training, if it is treated as a box-ticking exercise, will lack quality control and give a false sense of security that the measures are being followed.

Obviously, what I have just said is contradictory, because I do not actually know quite how one should tackle this, but the Government cannot just brush aside the concerns; these are genuine dilemmas that I do not think the Bill addresses at present. There will be real on-the-ground issues that venues face if this legislation is passed.

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[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I have listened to this amendment with some interest, and I understand the noble Lord’s reasoning for tabling it—sometimes such things require expertise. But I do not accept taking it away from public finances into the private sector, because the private sector will probably be financially burdened enough by this legislation.

My concern is that it might provide the opposite of the noble Lord’s intended idea. It might be very costly, as has been outlined, and you might not get the expert advice you need. But I do not disagree with the principle of allowing outside advice. That could be done through a training system for each individual company rather than being provided by an independent company. If there was a terrorist incident, one of the first things that might be asked is “What advice and what training did you take in respect of securing your premises and ensuring public safety?” So I understand the basis of the amendment, but I am not so sure that it is entirely there.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this group, but I will make a couple of points. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is not necessarily one I support, but the idea that snake oil salesmen are confined to the private sector means the fact that people are not aware of what is happening among NGOs, the voluntary sector and charities, particularly in terms of training. Goodness knows, there is a huge amount of guff being peddled and sold from that direction, so I want to at least acknowledge that it is not just private providers.

Even if I am not particularly moved by the amendment, it is also not entirely fair to suggest that it is trying to sell training certificates that will falsely imply that people will feel safe because they have had some accredited training. If I am honest, my concern about the whole Bill is that the public are being told that if we pass the Bill, they will be kept safe from terrorism. That is mis-selling.

I have raised these points throughout our discussions on the Bill. We face huge challenges when it comes to terrorism, extremism and keeping the public safe, and, of all the pieces of legislation we could bring in, this is the least effective and the most anodyne, and will have no impact at all on public safety. Yet it is heralded as being so important. So it is a bit rich to have a go at one amendment for doing that, when in fact it could be levelled at the legislation as a whole.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. This amendment introduces a new clause on private sector engagement in counter-terrorism measures. It is designed to allow those responsible for managing high-risk or qualifying premises to contract with accredited private security providers for risk assessments and ongoing security services. It mandates that the Secretary of State maintains a list of certified private security firms and that these firms comply with national guidelines and be subject to regular audits by the Security Industry Authority.

I commend this amendment for its forward-thinking approach in leveraging private sector expertise to enhance our national security posture. In an era when terrorism remains an ever-present threat, we must not limit ourselves to traditional, often overstretched, public sector resources. Instead, we should embrace innovative partnerships that can deliver rapid, expert responses to evolving threats, while ensuring accountability and the highest standards of practice.