A Conservative Government would ‘urgently’ introduce Martyn’s Law, according to the party’s Manifesto launched today by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The document available online said: “This will ensure premises are better protected for terrorist attacks by requiring them to take proportionate steps to mitigate risks.” As featured in the June edition of Professional Security, Martyn’s Law campaigner Figen Murray has spoken of having a ‘plan B’ of approaching and working through Labour to get the law made, as the Conservatives appeared unable to bring forward the law, as proved to be the case when Mr Sunak announced a July 4 general election, coincidentally on May 22, the seventh anniversary of the Manchester Arena suicide bomb, when Figen Murray’s walk from Manchester to London culminated in a meeting with Mr Sunak to ask why the law had not been forthcoming, despite a commitment made by him and then Home Secretary Suella Braverman in December 2022.
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill remains not before Parliament as the Home Office went out to a second consultation earlier this year and has yet to respond further.
On fraud (the country’s number one crime by volume) the manifesto promises to ‘keep turning the tide against fraudsters’. It points to a statistical decrease in fraud last year; a new police National Fraud Squad; and proposes a ban on ‘SIM farms’, ‘which are used to send bulk messages for fraudulent texts’.
The document also makes much of tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG), ‘making clear to the police that these crimes are as significant as terrorism, serious and organised crime and child sexual abuse’.
On criminal justice, the manifesto promises a ‘justice system that delivers for victims and the public’, and ‘tougher’ sentencing such as for ‘knife crime, grooming gangs and assaults against retail workers’. It mentions the ten-year drugs plan, ‘to cut crime and help people rebuild their lives away from crime’. The Conservatives acknowledge a ‘covid court backlog’ by stating that they will keep Nightingale courts open (courts set up during and as a result of the pandemic).
The Conservatives also unveil a ‘plan to counter extremism and protect our streets’, arguing that in recent months the country has seen ‘shocking increases in protests being used as cover for extremist disruption and criminality’. In keeping with a general trend for the document to highlight what the Conservative Government has done, it points to the Public Order Act 2023, as ‘tough new laws to curb disruptive protests’, singling out climate change campaign groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion (XR, who are due to hold a march on June 22). Promised are ‘further powers’ for the police, ‘to ban face coverings, pyrotechnics and climbing on war memorials’; and a ban on protests outside schools.
The manifesto also states intolerance of anti-Muslim or anti-semitic hatred, quoting money to the Home Office’s Protective Security for Mosques scheme, and the Jewish charity the Community Safety Trust (CST) respectively. Mr Sunak was a speaker at the CST’s annual dinner in London in February.
Visit https://manifesto.conservatives.com/. On national security see https://www.conservatives.com/priorities/security.
Photo by Mark Rowe: XR graffiti, Lewes town centre, Sussex.
