Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Chris Murray and Tim Roca

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Tim Roca]

Q Have you a view on the designation of the SIA as the regulator?

Alex Beard: It puts additional responsibilities on the SIA, which needs the resources and expertise to fulfil those duties. It is a big step up—that is my No. 1 observation.

Heather Walker: And it needs the time to put this in place so that it is consistent and appropriate.

Paul Laffan: Certainly from our point of view, it is a good appointment. It is the logical one, given what it already does in the private security sector. Our only real concern would be around its—forgive me for using the wrong word—ability to pragmatically apply the risk assessment and the review of processes in what is quite a different industry and setting across much of live entertainment, versus the classic private security sector, but we are sure that that will come out in its guidance as it starts forming.

It would be great to have clarity in the Bill on how the SIA will interact externally, such as with public planning. As we strengthen our own four walls, if that shifts the attack vector to externals, with things like vehicle-as-weapon, we have very little control over the public spaces outside our buildings, yet we will introduce a crowd of people leaving after a show. HVM—hostile vehicle mitigation—is an example. That is something that we always push for in planning applications and it is very swiftly declined, fundamentally on the basis of cost and whether it suits the planning aesthetic of pedestrianised areas. It is about understanding how much power the SIA will have in enforcing, collaborating and engaging with external bodies on behalf both of the Bill and of us as private entities.

Alex Beard: Ensuring that there are no cracks between the obligations on individual institutions and the role of the local authority and the statutory authority is absolutely key. Even when hostile vehicle mitigation is accepted as required or desirable, the time lag in implementing it can be very considerable.

[Chris Murray]

Q We have talked a lot about the proportionality and opportunity costs that come with these changes. Could you say a bit about what it is like in your sector? If there were a terrorist attack, that would obviously be really awful for the venue and the people involved, but if the public more broadly did not feel safe going to venues, would that have an impact on your ability to operate? How sensitive is your sector to those fluctuations? Put another way, is the proportionality correct? The impact on your sector could be quite significant.

Heather Walker: Security is both a moral and a commercial obligation for our visitors and our staff. It is essential that the public and our staff feel safe in our building; that is an important part of their feedback and how we keep on attracting them. The reasonable practicableness is a very subjective view. As an example, we do bag searches for everybody who comes into the building. Some might feel that having security arches is reasonable, but we have to balance that with the fact that we are a theatre—we are providing entertainment and this is a social space to come into with your friends and family. All these things are about balance and assessment. Having a CTSA to guide us through that is certainly extremely valuable.

Stuart Beeby: Our view, looking across the United Kingdom, is very similar. Things are affected, and there is a groupthink. We can demonstrate with statistics how long it took people to come back into places of mass gathering for great entertainment: post covid, it has taken a long time. I speak as the largest operator of theatre in the UK. There will be areas, particularly in some constituencies, where there are still independent theatres run by local authorities. The challenge with the cost base in live entertainment is very real, given the national living wage, energy costs and just the costs of producing. There has always been a high bar, but with those three it is a bit of a perfect storm. Unfortunately, cost is a reality that makes people look.

As we tried to paint a picture earlier, when we talk about the formulaic, you could get the same effect by scanning the ticket, having the table, checking the bag, having another queue for bigger bags or maybe not even allowing bigger bags into your theatre. You can do all that. If you come to our theatre at the Lyceum, with Disney as our partner, where we are doing 2,100 people with eight shows a week, you will see dogs there. I do not use dogs at the Savoy or the Princess theatre in Torquay, but that does not mean that you are less safe. There is an assessment.

We have to constantly manage that message. We do customer feedback, and you are right that we get the two bookends: “You made us do a bag search, it was raining, it was ‘An Inspector Calls’, the average age was 65 and we were out in the rain,” versus, “You were rushing us through, I had a bag and the check by your security staff seemed cursory.” We are constantly having to balance it.

There will be a real challenge on cost, which comes back to the application. For us, I guess it is about being very clear. It needs to be effects-based in terms of how it is assessed and the mitigations you put in place, because good training and being professional are just as effective as somebody being poor and just trying to whizz everybody through an arch, which would create a lot of cost. That formulaic piece is key.

We are constantly managing the message that these are safe spaces to be, because in the theatre the average age is still higher. It is still that demographic that is 45-plus with more disposable income and, particularly in regional theatre with your matinées, there will be more retirees, so they are very receptive to trigger events.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Chris Murray and Tim Roca

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Tim Roca]

Q The Home Office’s estimated costs are just over £3,000 for the standard tier. We heard this morning from a number of witnesses about the exercises that Manchester has done with a really wide range of businesses there, all the way from Depot Mayfield, which has a capacity of more than 30,000, to small and medium-sized nightclubs, such as Matt and Phred’s, Band on the Wall and hotels. I was struck by the information I saw from Manchester city council saying that in those desktop exercises, it was unanimous that the financial impact and operational issues were not actually that onerous in the view of the people attending those sessions. I would say that that sounds quite positive. Can you comment on that?

Jon Collins: I think that is a by-product of the fact that we operate with licences and have partnerships with local authorities that go back decades. The variable that we do not want to introduce is for an inspector to come to a venue or festival and insert new requirements with no appeal, which they can do at the moment on the balance of probabilities, and disrupt that well-established way of working between the venue and the regulator.

On the Home Office’s costs, the difference between the low-end cost and the high-end cost for the total bill is eightfold—it is around £593 million and up to £4 billion. That tells you just how open-ended a lot of this legislation is at the moment. Trying to work out compliance costs and so on can therefore be a challenge, but the Manchester experience is common to our work with local authorities up and down the country.

[Chris Murray]

Q You are making a really interesting point. To follow up on that, do you accept that there are two categories of organisations? There will be some where the inspector will find that they are doing everything that they should be, so their costs will be low, but there will be some that are not—otherwise, there would be no need at all for this legislation—and costs will be involved there. That is the open-ended component.

Jon Collins: I will make one quick point before Melvin comes in. Because we operate with a licence, we are already considering counterterrorism safety and security in how we run the premises. The issue is the new variable. I do not see that there are two classes of venue; the Licensing Act takes care of that. If you are not meeting your obligations under that Act, your licence is at risk and can be removed. The fact that this can be imposed without appeal on a balance of probabilities, and disrupt what can be a decades-old relationship between the venue and the local authority, is the concern.

Melvin Benn: It is exactly as Jon said. Because there is an entertainment licence, the granter of the entertainment licence—be it a premises licence in England and Wales, or a yearly licence in Scotland, for example—has assessed that what the operator is doing is safe and makes the customer safe. In that sense, one could argue that there is no need for the legislation.

I think the industry generally would say that adding an additional safety piece about counterterrorism into the four pillars of the Licensing Act would have been a better route than creating an additional piece of legislation. We are not in charge of that, and we will go whichever way it is. We are fully supporting the direction of this. The simpler way would have been to add to what already exists, rather than to create something separate.

[Tim Roca]

Q That is from the point of view of your industry, but we are also talking about places of worship, schools and other places.

Melvin Benn: Obviously, I am speaking from the point of view of my industry. But it is an industry that is quite grown up and has an incredibly good safety record. In our view, adding to what already exists would have been in some ways a simpler route. There would then be something separate for unlicensed premises. The fact that the Bill almost ignores the existence of licensed premises is a little bit of a failure. That is where we see conflict—and we do see conflict—not with the overall aim, of course, but there are two jockeys on the horse at some points. That is where you are going to get to, and when there are two jockeys on a horse, that horse never wins. At least, I have never backed one that won.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Roca]

Q I worked in higher education, so I know that there are quite a lot of regulators already knocking around. I wondered what your view was about the SIA being designated as the regulator, as far as the legislation is concerned.

Gary Stephen: I am aware that in some parts of the security industry, the SIA has a poor reputation when it comes to the enforcement of licensed premises. But from the information provided to me, and with the creation of a separate entity within the SIA to manage the enforcement of new legislation, it is comforting. Looking at the alternatives, it seems like the most practical and logical appointment on the face of it.

[Chris Murray]

Q What is your view on what the Bill would look like in practice? Could you give us a bit of an overview of the reality of what it would look like on the ground for your sector, and how you judge the level of compliance and compliance risk you would be taking on board?

Gary Stephen: The majority of higher education organisations will be in the enhanced tier with public protection measures. I strongly believe that most of my peers have significant experience in dealing with counter-terrorism risk assessments and security plans, and I would be disappointed if that was not already a priority for most of them in the planning and preparation of events. However, I am aware that not every organisation has an experienced security professional to manage events on campus.

With that in mind, we created the special interest group CONTEST to share best practice and signpost to our members what good looks like. Most organisations have very good relationships with local counter-terrorism security advisers, and due to specialist research being carried out on many sites, the security posture is normally of a good standard. So I would be conscious to make sure that vice-chancellors and COOs are aware of their obligation under the new legislation.