The Protect Duty – more commonly known as Martyn’s Law – awaits a listing in the King’s Speech this autumn and Parliamentary time. At the Security Industry Authority’s conference in London yesterday, the audience got something of an update on official thinking and a timetable – there isn’t one, Mark Rowe reports.
As Debbie Bartlett, Head of Protect and Prepare at the Home Office, who’s responsible for the policy development of Martyn’s Law, recapped, this dates from early 2020 when the then Home Secretary Priti Patel committed the Government to consulting on such a duty – in May published as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) draft bill. In the summer, the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs gave the draft ‘pre-legislative scrutiny’ and in July published their findings, which (as featured in the September print edition of Professional Security Magazine) amounted to such criticism of how the Home Office had written the proposed law as to cast doubt on whether it’ll go any further.
As for the Home Office view, Debbie Portland said of the MPs’ scrutiny that ‘we were keen to get feedback as much as possible’. She, as is usual with the department, did not give any timetable for when anything might happen, other than saying that the Home Office hoped to make the draft bill into law as Parliamentary time allows. One of the many things not set out by the Home Office so far is what body, new or existing, might be the regulator of the duty – a legal responsibility on premises open to the public to take measures to counter acts of terrorism.
The SIA’s chief executive Michelle Russell asked Debbie Portland who might the Protect Duty regulator be (we can add that the SIA, the health and safety executive or the NPSA, the official National Protective Security Authority, would be the likeliest). Debbie Portland could give no update; it’s being considered. She did say that the legislation would be about raising consistency of security across public venues, across the UK (including, that is, Northern Ireland; although the Home Affairs Select Committee did note that the region had particular security issues, and measures, and that the Protect Duty might not be applicable).
Also in question is cost; including cost of any regulator; and whether it would fine or otherwise punish those whose crime under the Duty would be to not be compliant. The conference was assured that the law would be ‘absolutely not about catching people out’ and the regulator would (in the first instance) be about support, education and advice to venues.
The former senior policeman now the director of enforcement and inspections at the SIA, Paul Fullwood, reminded the audience of the threat from terrorism: that the authorities are thwarting attacks on a regular basis. For those working in private security, the Protect Duty would mean officers understanding what was expected of them; training; and standard procedures for venues, tested regularly – all in all, similar to health and safety. It can only professionalise our industry in terms of protecting the public, he said – and public protection and public safety were phrases much used by SIA speakers over the day.
Whereas a Protect Duty would mean work for venue managers, more directly of interest for security people is what a Nactso speaker described: the ‘competent persons scheme’ whereby consultants or advisers would be certified to do work for venues to reach compliance with the Duty; a register of security managers able to deliver a counter-terrorism risk assessment to the hundreds of thousands of places that stand to fall under the Duty; and an Ofqual-certified, level three qualification, ‘in early stages of development’, that would equip someone to a ‘baseline’ to know how to assess their risk and make counter-terrorism protective security. Such a course would have a syllabus (Nactso is drafting that) which would be taken to an exam awarding body. Nothing sounded very definite; the Nactso representative spoke of ‘a lot of working parts’. Nactso said that it’s prioritising the qualification first (as the process to make it a reality is longest).
Among the audience was the former senior counter-terror policeman Nick Aldworth, who pointed out the recent release of research by Dr Dylan Aplin at King’s College London on how ‘a staggering number of CT training events have been delivered across the length and breadth of the UK without audit’ since about 2004; and how ‘little regard appears to have yet been taken of the need to improve the quality of the CT training products themselves, to evaluate the ways in which they are delivered and understand how effective they have been in improving the resilience of what are now known as Publicly Accessible Locations’ (PALs, to use the Home Office jargon).
On ‘competent persons’; see also the Nactso-ProtectUK website.
Photo by Mark Rowe; SIA chair Heather Baily speaking, at the Hammersmith, west London event.
