Yesterday on day one of two at the Counter Terror Expo (CTX) at London Excel I met someone who went to see Taylor Swift in concert, at Murrayfield in Edinburgh; and then Anfield, Liverpool. I was able to satisfy my curiosity about the appeal of the American singing phenomenon; and, should have paid more attention to what they said in passing about the venue security. They gave me the impression that they felt the security at one was better than at the other (it would be unfair to say which). Their feeling was based on the human security officers and stewards, presumably, rather than any behind the scenes analysis of the physical and electronic security devices.
Here lies many of the big, unanswered or unanswerable, issues around the practice of security management, and indeed the service economy more generally. If you go to see Taylor Swift in concert, in Scotland or Canada, and stay at a chain hotel before and after, you expect to see and hear the same sort of things. In a word (as used by the Swiftie) consistency. Or would you? The support band need not be the same, nor the running order of the songs (if it were, might Taylor Swift, her dancers and everyone taking part nightly rather tire of the sameness?). Turning nearer to private security, and staying in the UK, if on your way to or from the venue you trip and injure your nose, you may go to the nearest hospital, or you may ring 999 and ask for a paramedic; or if a litter bin or a e-scooter were to catch fire, you would dial 999 for the fire brigade. In either emergency, you would expect to see a consistent response whatever city you’re in; the responder would wear the same uniform, carry the same kit, just as your chain hotel room would have the same fittings. Though probably depending on place staff would talk with a different accent.
For emergency response as for site security, it’s a consistent desired outcome we want. To give an example, stadiums commonly ask ticket-holders not to bring any but small bags in. Such are the trends in leisure that some going to stadium concerts have made a weekend of it and have stayed in a hotel that’s unhelpful around holding onto your luggage once you’re checked out or before you check in. So what do you do with your rucksack with a water bottle and left-over sandwiches? If it’s a choice between getting in to see Taylor Swift, and pushing your rucksack behind a wheelie bin, you ditch your rucksack, even though you should have known better, well beforehand, and though you create a security problem. Hence search dogs and handlers besides the hundreds of stewards and SIA-badged security officers on duty.
The passing of Martyn’s Law, a Protect Duty, a legal responsibility on premises to take measures to protect against terrorism, implies standards to comply with, and some inspection regime, to punish those who fall short, and to certify those that attain the standard. In yesterday afternoon’s panel at CTX, Chris Medhurst-Cocksworth of the re-insurer Pool Re spoke interestingly not only about how insurers may treat Martyn’s Law but the insurance market. Insurers, he said, are intrinsically cautious; ‘they want to know about the risk’. If and when the Protect Duty comes in, insurers will want premises to prove that they treat risk (of an act of terror, in this case; like theft or fire) proportionately; otherwise, the premium may go up. That implies an ‘auditable process’. The prospect is that if a venue were to answer a set of questions, the same as a householder does for their insurance, a site may get a ten per cent discount on their insurance – for the largest sites, a six figure sum.
This implies much work for the security industry, to measure what it does. And (to return to the Taylor Swift concerts) implied are comparisons between the security at venues. Except: does security at Murrayfield, Anfield, and so on, have to be the same? Murrayfield most famously hosts international rugby, Anfield Premier League football. As the two sets of spectators and the risks they bring – such as violent drunkenness – differ, so should the amount and style of security on the day. Will a compliance regime reflect that?
A further case against sameness is that it makes for innovation, an argument I have heard for retaining or at least being careful with how we tinker with the country’s 43 police forces. To have cops in different uniforms or vehicles in one county from another would be confusing; yet if one force works out its own way of doing something – restorative justice for shop theft, let’s say, in response to a local demand; ideally, assuming some central body can be a clearing-house, other forces can learn and copy.
