Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (Second sitting)
Debate between Sonia Kumar and Kirith Entwistle(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Sonia Kumar
Q
Mike Pearce: The one thing that every sector in the UK has in common is that we rely on customers to drive the economic engine. We rely on them coming back to our venues, our hotels, our shopping centres and our supermarkets. If they do not feel safe and if they do not understand what their responsibilities are in order to keep their families safe, they probably will not come back in the same numbers as before if there is a major event at one of those venues. We do not take that for granted.
For example, over 32 million people transit through Saint David’s Dewi Sant in Cardiff, a Landsec property that is right at the heart of the community. That is a huge number of people in a very vibrant city that we sit in the middle of, and the customer experience is everything to us. They understand—we hope, because we message our customers, including brand partners like John and others, as well as smaller brand partners and the general public—our expectations; for instance, they understand what we expect them to do if they see something suspicious. The “run, hide, tell” message has not gone away yet. We have seen examples at some of our sites—at Bluewater, particularly—that people will move quickly if they see a threat. That has taken years to bed into the public consciousness.
The experience for the public should be welcoming: “Come on in. You’re safe. Come and enjoy the venue. Come and enjoy the hotel. We’ll worry about security for you, mainly, but you have a responsibility, if you see something, to notify us—and working together, we will do something about it.”
Kirith Entwistle
Q
Neil Sharpley: Is that for me? Are you asking about the impact of the current threshold?
Sonia Kumar
Q
Max Nicholls: I will make an opening point generally on community sports venues and organisations. Across the country, we have roughly 100,000 grassroots sports clubs; as many on the Committee will be aware, these are predominantly volunteer-run, and do important work in the community to get people active and deliver community cohesion, as well as delivering all these other social benefits driven by participation in sport and physical activity.
We know that there are lots of challenges around recruiting and retaining volunteers, specifically post-covid. One common thing our members tell us is that volunteer recruitment is one of the key barriers to delivering more sport and physical activity. As Cameron alluded to, something we are keen to work with the Committee and Government on, through to the production of guidance, is supporting those volunteers in community-based organisations; we want to understand what their environment requirements are and give them as much information and guidance as possible to support them in the undertaking of their requirements.
As you say, that will look very different in different parts of the country. We represent a huge plethora of sports and recreational activities where the clubs and activities are very different. Having the flexibility to understand what is appropriate and practicable for those different organisations is important.
Cameron Yorston: To add to that briefly, and to reiterate the earlier point, we want to avoid unintended consequences. It is quite hard as at now to envisage all the specific impacts that might emerge from the legislation, given there is clearly a need for greater clarity and guidance.
The overarching point is that we do not want to impose any potentially prohibitive burdens or requirements on volunteers who are already very stretched, as that risks reducing the provision of sport, physical activity and recreation against the backdrop of the country’s wider challenges, such as issues with public health and a struggling NHS. What we do not want to do is inadvertently reduce people’s ability to participate in sport, recreation and physical activity, because there are adverse unintended consequences to that.
Kirith Entwistle
Q
Max Nicholls: There are some areas in which further guidance would be welcome. In a sporting context, we often have tournaments or events that are held in different venues every year: the Open golf tournament is held in a different golf club each year, for example. The interaction between the organiser of the event and the premises at which it is held is important not only from a responsible person perspective, but in terms of the requirements for the duration of the event and the rest of the year.
We would like to see flexibility where premises host an event that is classed as a qualifying event but are otherwise standard-tier premises for the rest of the year—where they understand their requirements under the obligations on standard-tier premises, but for the duration of the event only they must meet the enhanced requirements for a qualifying event. There is still some slight uncertainty about how that would work in practice, so we would welcome further engagement and clarification in the guidance.
A venue such as the Nottingham tennis centre hosts a one-week tournament with 5,000 people on site, but for the rest of the year it is a community facility with a couple of hundred people on site. We think that those are two different uses and should be treated as such, but we would welcome further engagement and clarification.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sonia Kumar and Kirith Entwistle(4 months ago)
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Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)
Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)