Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, as a bishop whose diocese includes around 300 places of worship, most of which will find that this Bill directly applies to them, I have, along with my right reverend friends on these Benches, a very obvious interest to declare. But as the Bishop of Manchester, I have a more specific reason for wanting to see this Bill reach the statute book. Martyn Hett, whose name is immortalised in the informal title by which we know this Bill, was killed some three minutes’ walk from my cathedral. We are all grateful for the persistence of his mother, Figen, over these last seven years, and for achieving the degree of cross-party consensus that has brought us to this point today.

In the immediate aftermath of the Manchester attack, it fell to me to help lead my city and its people in how we responded. I spoke then of the crucial difference between defiance and revenge. For me, that comes direct from my reading of the Christian scriptures, but the application is for those of all faiths and none. The terrorist sought to divide us. Acts of revenge by one part of the community against another would have played into his hands.

Instead, we showed our defiance. We came together in one of the most moving examples of a community embracing its diversity and showing its love that I have ever seen. We in Manchester were helped in responding to the atrocity by the support given to us by national leaders, not least the then Prime Minister, the now noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, whom it is a pleasure to see in her place among us this afternoon.

Crucially, by being defiant we did not allow the extremists to determine how we lived our lives. We did not cower behind our front doors. We did not retreat to the safety of those who looked, thought or believed like us. We got on with our lives, while being somewhat more vigilant than before. That same principle needs to lie at the heart of this Bill. Its provisions need to be such that they do not lead to mass cancellations of events, nor to the closure of social, commercial and religious venues which cannot afford the costs of compliance. What we enact in this Bill must be proportionate. It must balance the very real risks that we face with the need for us to live as we choose, not as the terrorists seek to dictate.

I think that we have got that balance broadly right in the form that the Bill has reached us. I am grateful for the various amendments made in the other place. It is right that we focus on the expected attendance at an event rather than some technical capacity of a building. Many of my churches are built to hold the largest occasion likely ever to be required. While I pray for the day when every service is as packed as it is on Christmas Eve, I need to be realistic, and we all need to pursue measures commensurate with the numbers that we expect. The same will apply to many other venues.

I am grateful, like other noble Lords, for the standard tier commencing at 200 rather than 100. This will save smaller events, often community-led and dependent on volunteers. It will help vital local venues remain open to serve their community. However, increasing the figure to 300 would go too far. I am minded to oppose any changes to the number during the future stages of the Bill.

While we are still at an early stage of our consideration of the Bill in this House, I hope that either today or at a later stage the Minister can offer 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. We all need to be fully equipped for the responsibilities that this Bill assigns to us. Given that places of worship across all main religions form between 10% and 20% of the affected premises at a guess, I ask the Minister for his assurance that His Majesty’s Government will produce guidance specifically to address these contexts before the Bill is enacted. I assure him that I and others stand ready to help in that task in any way that we can.

I thank those who drafted the Bill for recognising that places of worship are special and are allocated accordingly to the standard tier irrespective of capacity or likely attendance. As other noble Lords have noted, this appropriately recognises the relationship between those buildings and the communities that they serve and the deep experience that faith communities have of working with police and specialist security providers for those occasional very large events that we host.

Much will no doubt be said, later today and as we go on, about the role of the SIA as regulator. As with the other provisions of the Bill, the regulator’s powers and responsibilities need to be proportionate to the task. We do not want a toothless tiger or an overbearing and unaccountable overlord, but I will listen carefully to the arguments made on the powers, responsibilities and accountabilities of the regulator as the Bill progresses.

Finally, while reiterating my thanks and those of my colleagues on these Benches to Figen Murray, I also single out Brendan Cox, whose wife Jo was murdered while fulfilling her parliamentary duties. I have had the privilege of meeting him on a number of occasions and offering my support to what he, Figen and others have been doing over these last few years to address the ever-present threat of terrorist atrocities. However, Jo’s death reminds us that one of the main ongoing terror threats in the UK, as recognised by our security forces, comes from those inspired by extreme right-wing voices. These seem to be increasingly tolerated, perhaps even encouraged, on some social media platforms. Beyond the scope of this Bill but building on the exchanges that we had at Oral Questions earlier today, I urge His Majesty’s Government to complete the implementation of the Online Safety Act now, as a matter of urgency, so that fines based on total global earnings can be levied against those who seek to undermine our parliamentary democracy from outside the UK.

It is not enough for us to focus purely on security at public events; we need to get upstream. This year, 2025, must be the year when Britain takes decisive action against those who seek to radicalise others or to normalise violence in pursuit of political ends, whether they come from within the UK or beyond our shores, and no matter how wealthy or how powerfully connected they may be.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 25, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and to which, as he set out in opening the debate on this group of amendments, I added my name. I did so because this amendment sits very well alongside the other amendments that he has brought forward on behalf of the heritage rail sector and which we debated earlier in Committee. As with those amendments, it applies to a huge range of organisations, well beyond heritage rail or indeed heritage alone. It follows the thoughts that we expressed previously in Committee, and as many noble Lords did at Second Reading, about the importance of volunteers to so much of the cultural, sporting and heritage voluntary sector that we are championing and have very much in mind as we look at the Bill.

I am very glad that noble Lords have had smaller venues in mind as they have looked at this amendment. They are particularly reliant on volunteers—some of them all the more so since the changes in the Budget to national insurance contributions, which have made organisations that are run on a very tight margin more reliant on people who give their time freely.

There are so many barriers to people being volunteers. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, mentioned briefly the cost of transport: if you are travelling to a heritage railway, you often travel many miles at your own expense, filling the car with petrol in order to get there. There are many barriers that put people off volunteering and enriching our lives, and we must make sure that this does not become another of them.

The people who volunteer and look after the public in these venues are no less diligent, professional and concerned about the safety of those who come to enjoy those venues, but they certainly need the help, assistance and training that the noble Lord envisages through his amendment. It must be provided in a different way from the way in which is mandated and applied to full-time employees. As the noble Lord says, many volunteers are seasonal and sporadic, so it is important that they are able to refresh their training—for example, students who have volunteered, gone away to university and come back, will need a way of being trained up again and refreshed in these responsibilities.

It is important to note that, because of the serious nature of these new duties on people who look after our cultural venues, they might appear scary. It is important that the training disabuses volunteers of such notions. As the noble Lord, Lord Mann, rightly says, we want to avoid the sort of panic and chaos that come if people are not prepared mentally and practically for how they will deal with the sorts of scenarios that we envisage as we look at the Bill but hope do not come to pass.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, says, the alternative, if there is not the provision that the noble Lord sets out in his Amendment 25, is the snake-oil salesmen that we heard about at Second Reading. They are already offering their views on how to implement the provisions in the Bill before it is an Act of Parliament, and charging small venues huge amounts of money to do it. They are leaving them worse prepared and more frightened about the scenarios that they have to think about.

The noble Lord, Lord Falconer, has been very modest in his amendment: it is a “may” and not a “must” duty. There is much to commend the amendments in this group from the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Hamwee, but those are “must” amendments while that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, is a “may”. It would make the voluntary job of people who look after these venues a lot easier, and I hope that the Government will look favourably on it.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of the amendments in this group, particularly that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. I have an interest to declare, in that I have 250 or 300 church buildings in my diocese that will come under the terms of the Bill when it is enacted.

I turn first to the provision of training. When, about 20 years ago, I first became a trustee of a large defined benefit pension scheme, it was quite scary, but I found that the Pensions Regulator provided me with training, which, as far I could work out, was free for me at the point of access. The principle that training should be provided and not just left to the private sector—to the snake-oil sales men or women, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, just referred to—is important, so that the state can provide good training or enable it to be provided. Similarly, back in 2000, I was involved with a group of friends when the asylum seeker dispersal scheme first began. I set up and won the contract for Yorkshire and the Humber to prove that this could be done morally and effectively, and not simply as a rent-seeking exercise at the expense of the asylum seeker.

State provision, ideally of a good standard that would drive up the quality of standards provided by alternative providers—the amendment does not say it all has to be done through the state—is much to be welcomed.

I recall the difference between volunteers and paid staff. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, said, for something that might be covered by one full-time staff member, it takes quite a number of volunteers, each giving small amounts of their time, to make happen. In my churches I have many volunteers—probably several thousand in the diocese of Manchester—who require DBS clearance for their work with children or vulnerable adults. The law is that those who are volunteers get the DBS clearance process for free; I have to pay for clergy and other paid staff of the diocese, but for volunteers it is provided free of charge. It is a good idea to find ways to help the many volunteers who enable small organisations, whether they are churches, heritage railways or small football clubs. My football club, Salford City, is in a rather lower league than the top two, but, again, there are many volunteers on duty to make sure that things are carried out properly.

I support the amendments in this group and hope that we can find some way of ensuring that good-quality training is provided that will avoid voluntary organisations in particular falling into the hands of those who will either charge them so much that they give up or exploit them for their own ends.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am genuinely torn and confused by this group of amendments. As this is Committee, I want to try to probe it a little because I do not know which way to go.

I was pleased that the Government listened to the consultations about training and, it seemed to me at least, dropped the notion of a one-size-fits-all approach. I thought that was commendable and still do. I know from my experience of organising events that at the same venue you can, for example, have different kinds of events that will have different requirements and need different types of training. I absolutely do not want to go against the idea of listening and thinking to ensure that training is not a source of problems for venues.

I also have a certain dread of training. Noble Lords have already noted that there are a lot of rackets about. When I looked into the original Martyn’s law provisions when they were proposed under the other Government, I saw how many adverts there were from consultants offering to prepare organisations for the legislative change. I got very anxious about that, because they were expensive and no one knew whether they were of the right calibre and so on. There was a worry that security firms in particular would make a packet. Having said that, it is the case that, inevitably, smaller organisations will not necessarily know how to do the training themselves and will turn to third parties.

I am not sure what I think about the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, but I think there is something in this. On the one hand, the thing which has worried most voluntary organisations is what they will do about training. I know from my work in the voluntary sector that a lot of volunteers are put off by the notion that they will all be sent off on safety training courses. It is the dread of your life: you are giving up your time for a good cause to help people, and you think, “Oh God, am I going to be jumping through those hoops?” On the other hand, it is understandable that smaller organisations are not going to have expert trainers on hand and so will need to bring in third parties. That is where one becomes unsure about what they are going to get, and there have been some suggestions in the amendments.

The other thing is that there has been quite a move to reassure venues that there will be signposting of suitable free training offers online. Those kinds of box-ticking exercises are really not worth even being free. There is a danger that training, if it is treated as a box-ticking exercise, will lack quality control and give a false sense of security that the measures are being followed.

Obviously, what I have just said is contradictory, because I do not actually know quite how one should tackle this, but the Government cannot just brush aside the concerns; these are genuine dilemmas that I do not think the Bill addresses at present. There will be real on-the-ground issues that venues face if this legislation is passed.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise in advance. The Minister will tick me off for this being a Second Reading intervention, and I should have been here on Monday to say it, but I would like briefly to give a small plug for an organisation that has not been mentioned at all at this stage: the National Protective Security Authority. This is an arm of MI5 which gives free advice on personnel security, physical security and other forms of security. It is informed by a knowledge of terrorist and state threats. It is based not only on the understanding of those threats but on commissioned research from universities. It will give advice for free—paid for by the taxpayer—to all sizes and shapes of organisation. When we are talking about the costs of this, and in the earlier stages about the so-called cowboys giving advice, I recommend that whoever is affected by this legislation looks at this website and seeks this free advice as their first step. I am sorry for the commercial plug and apologise for intervening at this stage.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, in this group. As the Bishop of Manchester, I have got something like 400 churches and church halls in my diocese, but these amendments go rather wider than that. For places of worship, there are already some grant schemes for protecting against terrorism, given the particular threat that places of worship, especially Muslim and Jewish places of worship, have traditionally faced.

Back in my days as a vicar—25 years or more ago now—I seem to recall that, when I was trying to do good things to improve disabled access in my church, it was possible to do the work and then reclaim the VAT, which would not have been possible on other works. The principle that the Government fund by way of tax relief works that are important to the well-being of the community, to enable people to participate safely in events and activities, is well established in law. If small venues, particularly village halls, have to do physical work to premises, I urge that we find ways to defray not all but part of the cost, recognising that that shows this is something that is strongly supported by the state.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 41, as I believe it is very important that we get some clarity. This amendment seeks to make sure that there can be no ambiguity in what is to be expected of local authorities, the SIA and other relevant bodies if the Bill becomes law.

We know that licensing and enforcement teams in most local authorities are already overstretched and underresourced. Through this amendment, I seek some reassurance that councils will be supported and financially compensated for the work they will have to do to provide oversight and enforcement, and around their ability to co-ordinate with the SIA effectively. The provision of advice and guidance that businesses will seek from councils will be significant, and it will be a cost. We cannot place additional burdens on our councils at this time unless they are funded fully. This amendment seeks to ensure that the Government have a duty and a mechanism by which they can fund and resource councils in overseeing compliance with the Bill’s security requirements.

I should also add that, as this is new legislation, the Government have already committed that they will finance local authorities for any additional costs that they incur, although that is not clear from this Bill.

While I am on my feet, I will also speak to Amendment 42. I have already spoken, as other noble Lords have, about the worry this Bill is causing venues, particularly smaller premises. If left unamended, I have no doubt at all that the financial burden of implementing these requirements would force a number of our smaller venues, and perhaps even a few larger ones, to close. While we must do everything we can to protect the public from terrorism, we cannot allow the threat of terrorism and associated countermeasures to be a causation for permanent business closure as, if this is to be the case, then we are allowing terror to alter our way of life and, of course, providing a victory for the terrorists.