Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (First sitting)

Sonia Kumar Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)]

Q What logistical challenges do you foresee in implementing Martyn’s law currently, based on the implementations that you have already made, for small operating venues and venues that have limited staff and funding?

Andy Burnham: As we have said, smaller venues have been working with Manchester city council and the feedback has been that it is a positive thing to do. Obviously, to have specific training on how to lock down or evacuate a venue is helpful not only for the most serious of incidents but more broadly. Let us be honest: venues face a wide range of incidents on an ongoing basis. There are risks to people’s safety throughout the year. It is something that is part of the night-time economy. I think that it has to be proportionate, but the measures in the Bill are proportionate.

I would go back to that request for mandatory training. If it is free training, why is that not in the standard tier? How does that impose a burden? Did we hear that it is an hour of a member of staff’s time? I do not consider that to be burdensome, to be honest with you. I consider it to be good practice that people are supported in their working time to access and do that training. It would clearly help in a terrorist attack, but it would probably help more broadly in terms of situational awareness, vigilance, and general good practice for running and stewarding a venue and ensuring that it operates well at all times.

I personally do not see why the threshold has been raised to 200. As we have just heard, many of your constituencies will now have many venues that are not covered. Given what we have seen this year, I think it is as likely for an incident to happen in one of those venues as it is in a pub with a capacity of 300 or 400. I do not see that as less likely. Furthermore, I do not think that what is being asked of those places is unnecessarily burdensome. You could even argue that it is more important for the smaller venues to do it, because they will have less resource to call on in the event of an incident.

[Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)]

Q The whole country saw how Greater Manchester came together after the arena bombings, and we have heard about the importance of not letting the memory of the event affect how we live our day-to-day lives. I wonder whether you can talk about the buy-in from local people and local communities. How important is it to the people of Greater Manchester and the city that lessons are learned and this legislation is implemented?

Andy Burnham: Mr Bishop made a point about recommendations from the Manchester Arena inquiry. The deputy Mayor, who is sitting behind me, has led a whole process to look at implementing every single one of those recommendations—to the letter. As I have said, what happened on 22 May 2017 has changed the city, but not in the intended way. It was intended to divide us, but it brought us together, as you have just recognised. It was also intended to weaken us, but in fact it will leave us with stronger arrangements. At no point in this process have I seen anything other than overwhelming public support for what Figen has called for. The public support has never been in any doubt whatsoever.

I want to come back to the point about the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. You may remember that, on the night, there was confusion within the fire service about what to do, and it took a long time to arrive at the arena. The service has gone through a painstaking, difficult exercise about what happened and how, and it is a very different organisation as a result.

I want to come back to this point: the role of fire and rescue services is not clear. We, along with London, are the only two fire brigades in the country to have put in place arrangements for all our firefighters to have training in marauding terrorist attacks and to have the capability to respond. That is not the case with the others. Again, I had no resistance to that training from the firefighters or the Fire Brigades Union; everybody saw that it was the right thing to do. But we are now in a position where neighbouring fire and rescue services do not have that capability. It is unclear what happens in an incident, and it should not be unclear.

The Greater Manchester experience is that we have done everything that this legislation is asking, and more. We continue to challenge ourselves and do more, but it has to be standardised nationally for the reasons we have given around the nature of the threat. The message from us is that none of it has been resisted or too difficult to implement with our public services. There is strong public support. I come back to what I said earlier to members of the Committee: please do not let this Bill be watered down any further. If anything, it should be strengthened. Amendments should be coming forward to strengthen it. The risk is that smaller venues will become the ones that are more targeted if we leave that flank open, and I hope that we will not. I think that the standard tier should go back down to venues of 100 or more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Jarvis]

Q It was about the extent to which local councillors will be receptive to those changes.

Keith Stevens: I think they are receptive to the changes and I think that local councils and councillors are very supportive of Martyn’s law. They have all seen the things, and most parish councils have quite good relationships with the security services. In my own area, we have regular monthly meetings to talk about the situation; actually, the police often use parish councils almost as the pulse of what is going on in the village. When there were all the problems last year, the police were in contact asking us to let them know whether we had heard any rumours that got off the ground. So, yes—very supportive.

[Sonia Kumar]

Q Do you anticipate that certain types of community events or venues may struggle to meet the requirements due to the nature of their spaces, such as historic venues with limited security options?

Helen Ball: We have had conversations with a lot of parish councils and parish clerks over the last few months. A lot of village halls are quite distinct in where they are, so there is some concern as to how they would actually be able to enact evacuation and lockdown procedures, particularly when you have just got a large room and you may only have one entrance and one exit. There is that level of concern.

A lot of the problems that we have at the moment are more about the fear of the unknown; people have read the Bill and are looking at the worst-case scenario. We have tried to advocate—as a society and also as NALC, as part of our Martyn’s law working group—that it is a bit of a “Keep calm and carry on” situation, and that we can do this. A lot of it is a common-sense approach to security. The sentiment from our society is that the legislation should be welcomed and that regardless of whether there are bandings within certain buildings, we should develop a culture of terrorism awareness.

“What price is a life?” is the other comment that a lot of clerks have said of late. Why would somebody’s life be less important if they were in a building that has 199 people as opposed to 201? It is incumbent upon our sector to try to encourage a better culture.

[Chris Murray]

Q Could I ask about the responsibility being placed on specific officers? As we all know, in the days after a terrorist attack there is a lot of media attention and emotions are very high. What would it be like for the person responsible for compliance, or named as the one supposed to do something that might not be a very big part of their job or something that they had only received limited training for? What protections do you think would be in place for those officers to be prepared for that and to navigate that scenario?

Helen Ball: Let me give you a bit of my perspective as a practitioner. My involvement in that kind of terrorism management came two weeks after the Manchester bombings, because we were due to have an outdoor music event with 12,000 people in our park. We were starting to get comments from the public such as, “I don’t think I’m going to feel safe. Can I have my money back?” It was incumbent upon us to sit down with the event organiser and their security team, and the counter-terrorism officers and the local police, to put measures in place that would reassure the public that they were safe.

A lot of the kind of things in the current Bill are things that we have been doing. In effect, I, as a town clerk, have had to take on that kind of responsibility. I already had the responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, so it is not as if it is something brand new to us; it is just a different vein.

From our sector, clerks are exceptionally resourceful individuals. They have to be, because they have lots of plates spinning at any one time. So the right kind of guidance would be beneficial—perhaps guidance that we could work within the sector, including the security industry authority, to have very specific guidance that would help our fellow clerks. I think they would take it on board, because they see that this is an important piece of legislation that we have to work towards.

Keith Stevens: In the Bill, it would be good to have slightly more clarity on the responsibilities. If the parish council owns the land, and it is let out for an event, whose responsibility is it? Yes, I think it is down to the parish council to make sure the event organiser is carrying out everything per the rule, but whose responsibility is it if that person says, “Yes, I’ll do all that.”, and then does not? It is one of the slightly grey areas that could be made clearer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Bishop]

Q Thank you all for coming. This question is open to all of you: what impact will the Bill have on your venues?

Alex Beard: In principle, these risks are ones that we face operationally day to day. We are already on the crowded places register, so we are already taking many of the actions implied in this legislation. In particular, the lens through which we do that is a risk-analysis approach, with support from the counter-terrorism security adviser and our specialist contractors.

Codifying the expectations of us through “reasonably practicable”, as well as having access to support in implementing this legislation through the relevant authorities and a regulatory body to refer to, are positive additions in principle. Of course, that is subject to there not being any cracks in the obligations between the various actors, and there being sufficient resource for the regulator to deliver its functions. I see this as building on the practice that is already in place. I would just like to stress that we are fully supportive of the legislation. We were involved in its consultation and we regard it as being a good thing.

Stuart Beeby: ATG Entertainment’s perspective is as a multi-site operator. We have 64 venues across Germany, America and the UK. 33 of those are in the UK, from Torquay to Glasgow. Similarly to the Royal Ballet and Opera, we have been involved in the creation of this Bill. While we feel we are already on a good footing with our processes and training and are fully supportive, it is a similar message from us if the process is too formulaic—a one size fits all.

Right now we work with all the security elements, be it contractors and risk assessments and the like or our counter-terrorism colleagues in the local constabularies. The challenges that we face running a 1,000-seat theatre in Torquay are very different from those at our two large theatres in Manchester or our 10 in the west end. So we are very supportive and feel that we are in a good position moving forward with training and processes, but we have an eye on how formulaic this may be with—forgive me—a cookie-cutter approach to it.

[Sonia Kumar]

Q What particular challenges do you foresee in conducting regular risk assessments for venues that have changing expositions, seasonal events, shift working or flows?

Paul Laffan: For us, we already have the processes built in. We have been doing this for a number of years to ensure that we are prepared, as we should be as a public space. Although our venues are vast and wide, the majority are quite straightforward in terms of what we do. The events themselves do not vary a great deal—it is either a play, a musical, a comedy or whatever—the operation of the building does not alter too much and the buildings themselves are predominantly listed, large buildings.

We would expect to conduct initial assessments, which we have already done, and to review them at a similar frequency to all our health and safety approaches; just regular touchpoints subject to any massive changes. We therefore do not feel that the risk assessment element would be overly onerous upon us. For others in our industry, where they have more dynamic spaces and second spaces, it could be slightly trickier; having that resource and knowledge could be challenging. However, we do not foresee its being a huge concern for us.

Heather Walker: One of our thoughts is that the public will need to understand how venues will operate under this Bill. As an example, post covid when we were all opening up, we all worked very closely together to make sure the kinds of mitigations and arrangements in place, so that the public felt safe coming back into theatres, were similar.

Whichever theatre you went to, you saw the same sorts of things in place. I think the nature of risk assessing for this arrangement, which I totally agree with, is going to mean different things for different people. Having different kinds of events, or a different audience profile attending those events, will perhaps change what mitigations you put in place. From the public’s perspective, they will need to understand that not everybody is doing the same thing. That might create some concerns about just how safe one place is compared with another.

Paul Laffan: If I may add to that, I think this comes back to “reasonably practicable” and how we apply that. Someone’s risk assessment can vary from operator to operator, person to person, so it is a question of how much guidance there will be around the expectations so that, when we are weighing up that impact likelihood, cost analysis, of “reasonably practicable”, we understand how we quantify that for a large operator with significant funds behind, it versus a small operator with far less funds. That then would raise concern for me that we may inadvertently create a higher risk profile for another venue; if ATG or the Royal Opera House spent a lot of money strengthening our own resolve and it makes another operator who does not have the same access to funds appear a more viable target.

Stuart Beeby: Our principle is “deter”. That is the key thing: the counter-terrorism strategy is not “defend”, but “deter”. That means that if there is hostile reconnaissance and you look professional and so on, if you are being targeted you could be pushing them along to what is considered a softer target, although dynamically they are actually complying with all the requirements of the Bill.

Paul Laffan: There would be some shape and colour around the risk assessment process and what some of the expected outcomes and the suitable and understood control measures are that would be pragmatic and proportionate to the risk, but also replicable across the entire industry. On Heather’s point, if as a customer I go to see “Mean Girls” one day and a ballet the next, I should not be surprised that there is security and a similar experience on the front end.

[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.