As ever, the September 2023 print edition of Professional Security Magazine gives you all the news about and affecting the private security sector in the British Isles, editor Mark Rowe writes.
That means the recent data leak by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the cold water poured on the Home Office’s draft Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill that would bring Martyn’s Law into effect, by the Home Affairs Select Committee of cross-party MPs.
The UK private security industry has invested emotionally so much in the proposed Martyn’s Law, that some readers may react angrily to the setback (reported page 18, featured in more detail on page 38) to the law actually being made. The committee pointed out numerous shortcomings and things left unexplained by the Home Office in their draft Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill. This is the Home Office that in the Theresa May years was so keen to deport West Indian and others who came from the Commonwealth and who’d been in the country legally, some even since before Mrs May was born, but couldn’t prove it; and the Home Office which comically began placing asylum-seekers in a ship in Portland harbour, then had to take them off again in case of legionella; a case of, according to the senior Conservative MP David Davies, ‘startling incompetence’. It’s no surprise then that despite having a couple of years (let alone since the spate of terror attacks in 2017 that, eventually, prompted the Home Office to propose a law for venue security), the Home Office proved unable to draft a law. If it does make it into the King’s Speech in the autumn, MPs in the House of Commons will only repeat what the Home Affairs Committee has said already; that the draft is not ‘fit for purpose’.
I can pluck one silver lining out of this, and it’s on page 41; that the years of campaigning by Figen Murray have not been for nothing, and her many friends in the security industry would not want her campaign to be for nothing. Security managers know what the draft Bill is trying to achieve, and the tools are to hand: training through the official ProtectUK app, plans to lock-down if an incident is reported, and exercises to test for any loopholes, whether of kit or people or procedures. Consec heard last year that last year’s Commonwealth Games was informed by the Manchester Arena Inquiry findings; this year’s Consec by the Association of Security Consultants (ASC) next month (see line-up, page 61) looks like it’s giving the afternoon over to terrorism. Yes, without a specific law like the Health and Safety Act, security managers will lack a powerful weapon, of a legal duty, to convince their bosses to devote money – and their time – to site and event security. Motivated and conscientious security managers will not let the Home Office stop them.
If you would like to see a print copy through the post of the magazine with a view to subscribing, email your postal address to [email protected]. You can read the ‘flip page’ magazine online for free at the ‘magazine‘ part of this website.
