Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th February 2025 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, this amendment is about ensuring that our regulatory framework for public protection is as efficient, effective and co-ordinated as possible. It is about asking the right questions, gathering the necessary evidence and being open to reform where it is in the public interest. I therefore urge the Government to accept the amendment and commit to conducting a thorough review of the role of the SIA.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very keen on Amendment 33 although I have not put my name to it—it is in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Sandhurst. It suggests an advisory board for the SIA with the intention of ensuring a collaborative approach to regulation.

I am keen on the amendment because one of my fears about the Bill is that it could be one of those laws that, in effect, means the state abdicating responsibility for public protection and outsourcing it to businesses and community organisations with very much a “You’re responsible for that” attitude, and it is then policed by the regulator. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, I am worried about the damage that might do to civil society.

I really like the idea of addressing some of the issues raised earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about how we ensure that there is a more collaborative approach. I would like civil society not to feel that it is being done to, dumped on or put in charge of public protection on its own. This strikes me as a good way of approaching that.

I put my name down specifically on Amendment 34 because one of the important things about it is a review that considers all the implications of the Bill some way down the line. We need to be able to consider trade-offs all the time. It is wrong to suggest, as I think was suggested in a debate on an earlier group by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, that those of us who were trying to consider cost-benefit analysis and trade-offs were being somehow glib about the possibility of people being killed in a terrorist bomb and that we somehow have a “higher-risk appetite”—the phrase used—or a higher threshold for risk-taking, whereas the important and responsible thing to do would be to ensure that we always considered safety first.

I think we have to acknowledge—

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

I think the noble Baroness is misinterpreting what I said. I said that in making these judgments, you had to have a risk appetite and that you needed to do that explicitly. I was not saying that any particular risk appetite was right or wrong; I was saying it should be made explicit. I certainly was not suggesting that the noble Baroness was therefore glib about people being killed. I was merely saying that that is the trade-off, and anyone making those decisions has to be clear about the trade-off they are making.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification and I am relieved to hear it. I think it was the bit where somebody asked, “How would you answer the situation where 199 people were killed if the limit was 200?” All I am saying is there is often a conversation like this when we talk about safety, risk and responsibility.

I like this amendment because it introduces into the debate about the Bill the opportunity—some months down the line—to have a cost-benefit analysis of whether it has worked. I first came into this House at the height of the lockdown period. On a number of occasions—rather tentatively at the time, because I was new—I, along with others, called for a cost-benefit analysis. I kept asking, with lockdown and all those measures in the name of safety, whether we could just assess whether they were the only way that we should proceed. I was told that we had to be very careful because old people were going to die, and so on and so forth—you are familiar with the arguments.

The reason I mention that is that we can now look back and say that many of those old people were locked up in care homes and greatly suffered. We can say about young people—when some of us argued that we should conduct a cost-benefit analysis of closing schools—that we now have a crisis of worrying about pupils and the impact that lockdown had on them. There is a discussion that the Government are initiating about the cost and impact of lockdown on employment people’s habits as we speak.

It is sensible with a Bill such as this to introduce a review that will give us the opportunity to do a cost-benefit analysis. This is particularly important because a regulator is introduced. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, explained that we need to be able to see whether the regulator is the appropriate way of getting what we would like, which is more public protection, or whether, in fact, it undermines some of the important aspects of local regulatory interventions.

We debated a very interesting group just before the break, when the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, raised the point about the number of regulatory regimes that each venue already apparently has to adhere to in terms of licensing, and so on. This amendment gives us an opportunity to see whether the central regulator is the appropriate way of ensuring that we keep people safe with respect to premises and terrorism.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 44 in my name, and I can probably be quite brief, as it covers similar ground to Amendments 33, 34 and 36, which have been spoken to by my noble friend Lord Davies. However, my amendment is complementary to the amendments already on the table. It does not replace them; it is consistent with them, but it looks at the problem slightly differently.

I think it is fair to say that those who have engaged with the SIA over the years have mixed views about its effectiveness even now, and that is when it has focused entirely on one fairly discrete industry. Now we are proposing a huge expansion of its role to cover all kinds of premises and organisations of all kinds of sizes, including voluntary and commercial organisations and so on; it is a huge expansion of the authority’s role. All these amendments really speak to the fact that there is some uncertainty about how that is going to be carried out in this very complicated and publicly sensitive area.

My Amendment 44 looks at this in a slightly different way and proposes an independent review panel. Of course, that could sit alongside the various advisory bodies that have already been spoken about, but, for two reasons, there is some value in having an independent panel when looking at these problems. First, it establishes a degree of distance. Its reports to Parliament will have a degree of independence of commentary, of not needing to ingratiate itself necessarily with the regulator and the industry. That is what is needed in this situation of a new area of work for the authority.

More important is the point that is in proposed new subsection (3) in my amendment, which is the specific risk of overreach—I have spoken about this on one or two occasions before as we have considered this Bill—and that, once you establish a bureaucracy, everybody has to pay attention to that bureaucracy; once something is in law, that has to be the priority for those who are operating it. There is a temptation for the legal authority to overreach and to lay down rules for its own convenience, rather than for the genuine good functioning of those that it is regulating; and to maybe not look sensitively at the different sizes and natures of organisations but simply to lay down one set of rules. History suggests that with these regulators the effect is that the regulatory burden goes up and is insensitive to the people being regulated. That is why there is particular value in looking at the issues of overreach and how bureaucracies work in practice and why there is particular value therefore in it being an independent body. So, to conclude, I hope the Government will be able to give serious consideration to this idea, along with others in this group.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord calls it bureaucracy; I call it life-saving measures. The Bill is about putting in place life-saving measures to ensure that, in the event of a terrorist attack, individuals know what to do. That might save lives downstream. That is a type of bureaucracy that I am quite happy to accept. There are many burdens and bureaucracies in life, such as health and safety legislation, mine legislation and road safety legislation. There is a whole range of burdens that are there to save lives and this is the same process.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

As I said earlier, there is no doubt that everyone in this Committee would like to save lives. It is a question of balancing whether the Bill and all that it does is life saving. If that is the answer, then there is no debate. If the narrative is, “We’re on the side of life saving, and anyone who doesn’t go along with this Bill, or is critical of it, doesn’t care about life saving”, then what are we having this debate for?

I want to reflect on the “collaborative nature” put forward in Amendment 33. The very people who really care about life saving are all the different local groups, and the amendment simply suggests that there could be a collaborative approach. I know that it has been described as a quango. I have always thought of the party opposite as people who are interested in stakeholders and local groups. There are so many groups in scope of the Bill that you cannot just go to some big organisation that represents them. The amendment refers to having more of them involved.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I accept that, which is why this Government—and the previous Government—undertook several consultations, opened themselves up to scrutiny by the Home Affairs Committee, had widespread consultation on changes to the Bill after this year’s general election, which we reflected on, and have listened to concerns about continuing further bureaucracy. The judgment of the Government is that this legislation is an effective way of helping ensure that we put in place protection measures in the event of a terrorist attack. To do that, we have to issue guidance via the Home Office and the Security Industry Authority. The further level of bureaucracy mentioned in the amendments would not help with that. We have had pre-legislative scrutiny and two public consultations and have engaged with law enforcement groups, victims’ groups, the Martyn’s law campaign team, Survivors Against Terror and parliamentarians generally. The statutory board would be an additional administrative layer that would be unnecessary and unhelpful.

Amendment 34 seeks to ensure that we judge the performance of the SIA at a time when it is not yet up to speed on the actions it will take in relation to this legislation. It is neither possible nor fair to judge the performance of the regulator so early in its lifespan. Ministers will examine that under the issues in Clause 12 that we have responsibility for.

Amendment 36 seeks to ensure that changes are made to the enforcement regime. As we see it, the enforcement regime has been developed drawing on lessons from existing regulators. The SIA will use different measures as appropriate to the breach in question. The SIA’s approach will be aligned with the Regulators’ Code. While Clause 20 sets out particular matters that the SIA must take into account, including the recipient’s ability to pay, the list is not exhaustive. If we impose that statutory duty, for example, to consider the views of local authorities, we will create additional burdens for the SIA and for local authorities that would provide that information.

Amendment 44 from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, again provides an additional level of bureaucracy that is not required to be able to hold the SIA to account. Overall on these amendments, there should be clarity about the SIA’s role. The Bill sets out clarity on that. There are currently powers for Ministers to intervene on a range of matters relating to the SIA, including the appointment of the chair and members. Ministers will be held to account on their performance.

The Government want the Bill to succeed. Therefore, between Royal Assent and any implementation date, Ministers will be on the case week in, week out to make sure that the SIA is fit for the purpose designed by the Bill, delivers, has appropriate guidance, involves all the organisations impacted by the Bill downstream and puts in place a range of measures to help support the training and development of people to make sure the Bill functions as we intend it to. Advice is good, but we have been through a big consultation, and this House and the other House have the ability to hold us to account. The amendments are therefore unnecessary in order to make effective use of the SIA.

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Secondly, what in particular is the Home Office or the relevant ministry’s evidence of the impact that personal liability for such penalties, in particular custodial sentences, will have on the willingness of volunteers to accept the personal liability that is imposed on the person responsible for qualifying premises and/or events, whether in Clause 4 at the lower level or in Clause 7 at the enhanced level? Those are my questions. It may not be possible to answer them now, but I think this is an important practical point going forward.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, on tabling these amendments. I think that they talk to some of the concerns raised informally at Second Reading and throughout Committee by some of us, which may not have been explicitly looked at. I very much support the spirit of this group.

I have had constant concerns about the unintended consequence of this legislation damaging the informal realm of civil society and the public square. The invaluable arena of community life allows social cohesion through, sometimes quite loose, local gatherings that are often organised by groups of volunteers and voluntary gatherings. Even though they are quite loose informal organisations, they are the cement that holds society together in many ways. In that sense they are loose; they are not paid and not necessarily professional, but they are the very heart of our communities.

I think we got a sense of that the other day in Committee. When the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, spoke about public protection procedures, he painted a vivid picture of the widest range of public activities that could be affected for any of us who work with small literature festivals—things that I know something about—art exhibitions in local areas that are put on regularly, or debating groups getting together. I was down at the farmers’ protest today. This might not endear me to the Government—although maybe it will—but they have been having lots of local gatherings in barns up and down the country, planning their action. That is what we want politics to be like; these are the very people who are our most active and engaged citizens.

In the arts, debate or politics sphere, it is always really difficult to encourage people to take on the role of trustee, chair of a committee and so on, because these are unpaid roles with responsibilities. It is difficult as it goes, but there are people who are prepared to do it. These amendments are important because they probe whether we can ensure that we do not make it more difficult to keep those people involved through the potential of this Bill to threaten them for a liability way beyond that which they might have signed on for—not because they will all wander around being irresponsible about the threat of terrorist attacks in barn meetings with farmers. It is not that they are recklessly inviting awful things to happen, but they will say, “I’m not going to formally put my name to that, because why would I?” Often people are retired, or they are doing it as public citizens, and it is just too much hassle.

How do I know that, apart from by talking to lots of people? It is because, as the Minister has rightly noted, through this Government and the Government before them, this Bill has had a lot of consultation and discussion. The one thing that consistently gets raised in all the evidence that I have read is that small and community organisations are frightened of it. One key thing they mention is that it will put people off volunteering for their organisations. The Minister is right to say, “We listened to a lot of those consultations”, and I am glad about that—but they did not listen to all of them or agree with all of them. That is fair enough, but it is perfectly reasonable to raise things that came up consistently in all the consultations and ask the Government to think again at this point, with some very creative, positive and constructive probing amendments about what we can do to reassure our most active and engaged citizens that this Bill will not threaten them. I ask the Government to take these amendments away and see whether they can come up with a constructive response to them.