Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Paul Waugh and Katie Lam

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Katie Lam]

That would be helpful.

Jeremy Leggett: Almost all the village halls of that size in England, Scotland and Wales are run as unincorporated associations. The charity itself is not a legal entity. The responsibilities for managing the charity are held personally and severally by the trustees, of which there might be between six and 10. So all the obligations under the Bill would fall to that group of people. Although the trustees of village halls voluntarily manage the halls for the benefit of their community, they are very seldom on site when it is being hired out. Therefore, the distinction between the people responsible for the building and the people responsible for the events is very clear.

Some of the provisions in the Bill for placing the responsibility on individuals who manage the building do not fit well with the constitutional structure of most village halls, although a small number are now becoming companies limited by guarantee and so on. Once we put in place the briefing, the support, the information and training, there is absolutely no guarantee that the people who have received that will be in the building if something happens. For those reasons, if no other, we have to think quite differently about how this legislation is going to be enacted in voluntarily run organisations.

It is worth saying that many of those we spoke to who responded to the standard tier consultation quite negatively are people who freely volunteer their time and their talents to provide a facility for their community—which they do, safely, 365 days of the year, for no pay. These are volunteers within their community. On speaking to many of them, they felt it was too heavy a stick to make this a legal obligation and that, in fact, rather more carrot would have been helpful in assisting them to do what they wanted to do anyway to keep their communities safe, rather than putting them at the risk of the law instead. That is one of the main reasons why the Home Office received such a negative response from that size and type of charities and buildings when doing the supplementary standard tier consultation.

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q What is your view on the enforcement powers of the regulator contained in the Bill?

Jeremy Leggett: I have to say that we have not looked in great detail at that. We have been so concerned about the way the entire Bill will be perceived by volunteers, because of the risk of us losing a lot of village hall trustees—simply because they do not want to see this responsibility falling on them personally—that we have not looked very hard at the exact sanctions that might be placed on them if they do not do it properly.