The House of Lords gave a second reading to the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill yesterday – better known as Martyn’s Law. Here’s a digest of the roughly 30,000 words spoken in the debate.
Labour’s Home Office minister in the Lords, Lord Hanson of Flint, opened the debate, by reminding peers of the campaigner Figen Murray, whose son, Martyn Hett, was among those killed in the Manchester Arena attack of May 2017. Lord Hanson pointed out that ‘the nature of the terror threat has become less predictable and potential attacks harder to detect and investigate’, and that ‘counterterrorism preparedness often falls behind areas where there are long-established legal requirements, such as health and safety’. He defined the proposed law as ‘requiring for the first time that those responsible for certain premises and events consider how they would respond in the event of a terrorist attack’.
He went on to set out what’s proposed; a standard tier covering premises and venues that hold 200 or more; and an ‘enhanced’ tier with more responsibilities, upon premises with 800 or more capacity. The Security Industry Authority would be ‘an effective enforcement regime’, and ‘the most appropriate body’ as regulator and inspector. The SIA (Security Industry Authority)would prepare operational guidance. He said that the law would ‘strike the right balance in achieving public protection objectives but without placing undue burdens on business or other organisations’, and promised ‘a more location-specific approach’.
Summing up after a three-hour debate, Lord Hanson stated that the number of properties or venues in scope from will be 154,600 in the standard tier and 24,000 in the enhanced tier. “Overall, the costs have therefore decreased from the estimated £2.17 billion over ten years to £1.83 billion.” For a standard duty premises, the estimated cost will be around £330 per year, in time and money, and around £5,210 for ‘enhanced’ tier premises. He dismissed talk of ‘burdens’, saying the proposal was like many other burdens in society, ‘that we have to accept, adopt and adapt to’. As for when the law would come in, Lord Hanson described the two years as ‘potential minimum – it may be longer’. The threshold of 200 he called ‘something we just have to settle on’. The Bill has been formally read a second time.
Tribute
Speaking first for the Conservatives, Lord Davies of Gower likewise paid tribute to Figen Murray; and fellow campaigners Nick Aldworth, the retired senior counter-terror cop; and Brendan Cox, widower of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox. While he said that the Conservatives ‘broadly support the Bill’, he raised some concerns: over the cost of meeting the law; ‘the practicality of enforcement’; and, what about cyber, or more precisely ‘the intersection of physical and cyber threats to premises’. For the Liberal Democrats, Baroness Suttie referred to the terror attacks over the Christmas holidays in Magdeburg in Germany and New Orleans in the United States; and quoted from the ‘very powerful briefing note we received from the Martyn’s Law campaign team’. She referred also to the threshold for premises coming under the law – in 2023 under the draft law savaged by pre-legislative scrutiny of the Home Affairs Committee of MPs, set at 100, and now 200; ‘some believing the figure is still too low and others feeling it is now too high’, Suttie said. Among her queries was ‘the information flow from the security services’ to venues, especially at times of heightened terror alert. She too spoke of the need for ‘getting the balance right’ between public protection and not being ‘overly burdensome’.
Lower limit
Crossbencher Lord Anderson of Ipswich noted that Tom Tugendhat, who as the Conservatives’ Home Office Security Minister was responsible for the Bill before the July 2024 general election, had tabled an amendment ‘that sought to raise the revised lower limit from 200 to 300’. He queried how official guidance online ‘will add to the common sense of those who operate small venues’. On that point of where the cut-off should be before smaller venues fall under the proposed law, the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, said he was ‘grateful’ for the standard tier starting at 200 rather than 100; and added that ‘increasing the figure to 300 would go too far’. Like others speaking during the debate he hoped for training to be offered, particularly to ‘faith and voluntary sector groups, along with other less commercial venues, training that is free, easy to access and available in a wide range of languages and formats’. He was thankful that places of worship were specially treated ‘and are allocated accordingly to the standard tier irrespective of capacity or likely attendance’.
London preparedness
For Labour Lord Harris, chair of the National Preparedness Commission, and who recently stepped down as founding president of the Institute for Strategic Risk Management (ISRM), recalled his report after 2016 for London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan on ‘London’s preparedness to respond to a major terrorist incident’. Among the recommendations was ‘as a condition of licensing, venues should have to be reviewed by a police counter terrorism security adviser’ (CTSA), which as he added implied ‘there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach’. Better security checks and a Protect Duty [an earlier name for the proposed law] will not prevent terrorism, ‘but they make soft targets harder’, he said.
Baroness May of Maidenhead, the former Home Secretary and Prime Minister Theresa May, raised the SIA, and called what’s proposed a ‘significant expansion of its work, and we need to ensure that it understands and has the training that it needs’. She also raised the prospect of smaller venues in particular being ‘almost bombarded by consultants who are all too keen to advise them’. Recalling London 2012 and the building of new Olympic venues, ‘security was built in and planned in at the earliest stage’, she said; she asked if security could be similarly built in, ‘particularly for large-scale events venues, so that we do not have to look at it as an afterthought’.
The cross bencher Lord Carlile, former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, described the proposal as ‘something that fills a gap but something that completes more fully counterterrorism law and provisions in this country’ and summed it up as ‘a very good Bill’. He like Baroness May touched on the SIA and said that it would need ‘every bit of help’ and all the ‘two-year introduction period’ before the Bill once passed by Parliament comes into force. He, too, warned of ‘some pretty awful consultancies’. The Conservative Lord Frost warned of ‘mission creep’; that the duty to comply would ‘create an industry that depends on that regulation, that has a potential interest in maintaining and developing it and which, in practice, often has a big influence on setting and defining the levels of standard practice and in seeing them promulgated by the regulator, industry bodies and others’. He noted that ‘the risk of any individual person facing an actual terrorist attack remains extremely low’, and that terror attacks might only be deflected, onto the street or in parks.
Heritage railways
The Labour peer Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick, pointed to heritage railways run largely by volunteers and that the proposed requirements were ‘not realistic or proportionate to the risk’. She understood that a ministerial letter (from Lord Hanson) to former Labour minister Lord Faulkner, as president of the Heritage Railway Association, dated December 23, stated that ‘a railway line itself and passengers on a train are excluded from the Bill’s scope’. Baroness Newlove, Victims’ Commissioner, welcomed the Bill. The Liberal Democrat Baroness Harris of Richmond (a former patron of ASIS UK, and current patron of IFPO UK) said that the Bill could apply to one million premises in the UK and 200 was a ‘sensible threshold’, meaning ‘that only 180,000 of those premises are now in scope’. The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe, said he supported the legislation, and raised the emergency services’ communications Airwave project, ‘which is now eight years late, running at £12.5 billion’, and the Home Office has no procurement in place to deliver the new system. Among his other points, he said that CTSAs would need ‘a significant investment’ to cover all the premises; and spoke in praise of facial recognition, asking ‘how do we enable our CCTV to be as effective as it can be’. As for where the SIA will get its advice from, Logan-Howe said that the SIA ‘should be able to develop commissions of research so that it can respond to new problems—because new terrorist attacks will come up and it will be vital that the SIA is dynamic and responds to the new threats’.
The former Conservative minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay recalled speaking to the International Arts and Antiquities Security Forum in County Durham in October, as featured in the January edition of Professional Security Magazine; he aired ‘nervousness about the Security Industry Authority’s ability and capacity to act as the new regulator in this area’. He too feared that venues will be ‘bombarded with consultants’. Baroness Fox of Buckley, who is also director of the Academy of Ideas which runs an annual festival, warned that ‘civil society, people self-organising and getting together and grass-roots gatherings risk being curtailed’. She asked: “Will lives be saved? I am still not convinced.” Similarly the Conservative Lord Udny-Lister called for more scrutiny, ‘to ensure that the legislation is both workable and proportionate, and that we balance protections with freedoms’.
‘Clarity’ sought
Separately, trade bodies such as LIVE (for live music venues) and the UK Crowd Management Association have been seeking ‘clarity’ over what the law will actually require and cost.
