Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 20A, 21A and 23A.

As we have heard, Amendment 20A is a probing amendment to do with advice. Always leaving persons where there is reason to suspect an act of terrorism is occurring or about to occur is not necessarily the right course. You need to have procedures in place which not only prevent leaving but give advice about what to do—it might be to leave or not to leave. If we are going to have specific terms in the Act, it should be clear that the broader picture is encompassed. It could be construed as being simply advice about leaving. At present, on one reading at least, it is too inflexible.

I move on to Amendment 21A. To reduce the risk of reasonable harm is, I suggest, too bold and too bald. Is any risk, however small, to be encompassed by this, to make it even smaller? You will never make any risk negligible. Is any harm, however modest, to be encompassed? What is being guarded against? There is nothing to detract from the purpose here. It is simply to make it workable in real life. We must be sensible about imposing what is, in effect, strict liability for unforeseen circumstances. That is why we suggest that there should be an assessment of the risk, cost and outcome, and proportionality.

Amendment 23A is simply to give a clear time. Currently, I suggest, the words “reasonably practicable” are too vague. They could lead to arguments. It would be better to set an end date. Is it once the document is prepared that it should be provided or is it the time in which to prepare it? To me, reading this, it was not clear. There has to be reasonable time to prepare it and there has to be a time limit after that for providing it. Really, there should be an end date in any event for providing it, which should be clear; in other words, you have a reasonable time to do things but it must be done within three months, six months or whatever is the right time. That is the purpose of this.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 22 is in my name. I am sure we all recognise the threat that the Bill seeks to address and do not underestimate its importance. The attack on the Manchester Arena was, frankly, awful and we must do everything we can to prevent such things happening in future. However, in doing so, we surely must not inadvertently stamp out important local and cultural community-enhancing opportunities for people to enjoy themselves in times when, frankly, there is not much joy to be had.

At Second Reading, the Minister said, I think at column 646, two things which particularly concerned me. First, he referred to “public protection” even in the case of an event attended by as few as 200 people. He referred to “evacuation”, “invacuation”—apparently a word in the Bill drafters’ lexicon, if no one else’s—“lockdown” and “communication”. I will examine “lockdown” in a moment.

Secondly, the Minister expanded on the wording in Clause 6(3)(b), which refers to

“measures relating to … the movement of individuals into, out of and within the premises or event”,

and he added the words,

“such as search and screening processes”.

Let me illustrate my concerns by reference to two different types of event.

First, I help run one of hundreds, probably thousands, of annual parish and village charity fundraising events around the country. Ours, like countless others, is knocking on the door of becoming a qualifying event. We have assessed the risk of attack carefully, and already we have in place sensible precautions. The area is surrounded by walls, so a vehicle could not get near the crowd. A bomb or gun attack, although of course awful, would be highly unlikely, as the target is low value and, furthermore, the event is conducted in the open air, so a bomb would be vastly less effective than in a building with a roof and walls. When I spoke on Amendment 11, I referred to the fact that all 15 attacks listed in the impact assessment took place in urban areas.

I turn now to lockdown. Incidentally, it appeared from PMQs today that the Prime Minister himself does not fully understand the concept of lockdown. But the noble Lord the Minister said in the context of this Bill that it is

“the process of securing premises to restrict or prevent entry by an attacker by, for example, locking doors or closing shutters”.—[Official Report, 7/1/25; col. 646.]

How does he recommend that we in our village event would exercise lockdown? The event is outdoors, not in a building. There are no doors to lock or shutters to put down. Yes, the area is surrounded by walls, but they would not keep out a determined attacker if there was such a hypothetical person. So we will be required to have in place the ability to lock ourselves down but we are, in practical terms, unable to. There is genuinely very little likelihood of an attack but, when the Bill comes into effect, we will be obliged to do something that I cannot yet understand how to achieve.

Similarly, I have grave concerns about the implications of the Minister’s reference to “search and screening processes”. It is important that he explains what he means by “search and screening”. Does it mean full-body scanning, for which each unit costs several hundred thousand pounds and daily rental costs are several thousand pounds? Does he mean having a hand-held metal detector passed over attendees’ bodies? Even those, to be effective and not the knock-off ones of the kind one can buy on the internet, cost thousands of pounds. Does he mean that bags are to be searched? Exactly what does he mean?

At the event I am contemplating, the imposition of the requirement to search or scan guests, as referred to by the Minister at col. 646, could be so costly that it would be an additional reason that we could no longer hold our event, which last year—admittedly an exceptional year—will have given more than £5,000 to local charities and village schools. Is closing us down really what the Government want to do?

The impact assessment estimates the 10-year cost to enhanced duty premises at £52,093. It is not clear whether that would be the same for a qualifying event, but it does not look far off to me. That is just over £5,000 a year, which would kill off very many such events. In the debate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, referred to his concerns that costs should not unduly constrain events such as those I am concerned about, and I hope that His Majesty’s Government think the same.

Secondly, I am involved with a major annual rural open-air sporting event. There are many similar events around the United Kingdom through the year, including agricultural shows, Eisteddfods, game fairs, horse trials and shows, music and literary festivals, Guy Fawkes Night events, Green Man—the list is long. These are not small affairs, yet many are run on a shoestring and, in recent years, several have already been lost.

In the case of the event I am involved with, the main issues are the same as those I referred to earlier: lockdown, and scanning and searching. The viewing public arrive in cars along narrow country roads with already very long queues. In practical terms, it would be impossible to search all the cars as they arrive. Depending on the direction from which they approach, traffic control decrees that they are directed to a number of car parks that surround the event on all sides. There being no suitable natural barriers, it would also be impracticable to funnel the crowds, once on their feet, so that they can be searched individually as they move into the event area.

Many of these events run at little more than break even, so the cost of barriers to funnel the crowds, combined with that of searching and scanning equipment and manpower, is likely to mean that they would not survive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

I am sorry have to say to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that the time limit is 10 minutes for him. If he could bring his remarks to an end, the House would be very grateful.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, I will. Thirdly, as regards the requirement in Clause 6(3)(d) relating to security of information about the event that may assist in planning acts of terrorism, given that most large events are pre-advertised and many are pre-sold, how practical will this requirement be and how does the Minister consider it can be complied with? I will write to the Minister with my other questions.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I suspect that the answer to quite a lot of the points that have been made lies in the term “reasonably practicable”, which is seen throughout the Bill. I asked some questions about that on the previous day of Committee, in particular whether reasonably practicable was limited to physical considerations or included financial ones and was a mix. Fair enough, my amendment was about the meaning of “immediate vicinity” and that is what the Minister answered, but I do not think he answered that question. If he is able to do so today, I think it might help us quite a lot. The financial implications are specifically referred to in Amendment 22.

I first heard the term “invacuation” about 20 years ago and I heard it from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey. I am very doubtful about Amendment 20A. I do not think it can be dealt with by advice. Taking the example of Grenfell, it seems very harsh to say this, but bad cases make bad law. I really doubt that the example we have heard could be answered by the change in the Bill proposed by this amendment.

With Amendment 21A, I suppose the question is whether reasonably practicable encompasses proportionate. I think, in the context, it does. Conversely, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and I think he is right to question in Amendment 23A whether it is appropriate that a copy of the document dealing with procedures is provided to the SIA as soon as reasonably practicable after it is prepared. It would be helpful to have a specific time limit here to ensure that the documents are prepared quickly, in a timely manner. That may be something for the SIA to be able to indicate was required, but it would be right not to have an entirely open-ended arrangement that could mean that some people who should be preparing documents do not get on with them as quickly as they should.