Lord Sandhurst (Con)

My Lords, I of course approve of the Government’s overall intention behind the Bill. However, I have serious concerns about how it will be implemented and whether it is necessary to have this wide range of powers on quite small organisations, events and places that will have events coming within the scope of the Act—when it is an Act—only once or twice a year. We could have real problems there. My concerns are similar to those of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, from whom we just heard. There is a real need for focus, and for the Secretary of State, when making regulations, to get them sharply on the point. This is especially so in relation to the likely impact on smaller businesses as well as voluntary and community-run organisations in the standard tier premises. There is a lack of evidence that the Bill will adequately reduce the threat of terrorism to smaller organisations, if indeed they are likely to be at risk. There will be problems too for one-off and occasional events, which may attract quite large numbers, but in informal surroundings. There will be a big burden on them. How will it really work? So, the purpose is necessary. Just because there are going to be 850 people at an event, do we really need the whole panoply of this Bill? In 2023, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee produced a report, which, for those who have not looked at it recently, is well worth looking at. It was a careful and well-evidenced report that addressed the then draft Bill. I know that things have moved on since then, but the conclusions reached by that committee on the evidence to which the report referred highlight areas that need to be addressed in the approach to be adopted today. The committee pointed out that in the 2010s—a slightly different period from the one that my noble friend Lord Davies opened on—there were 14 terror attacks. A lot of those involved knives; there were also vehicle attacks, bombs and one firearm. This was in the 2010s. The majority were out of scope of what is in the Bill: they were on the streets, on Crown premises such as barracks, or on transport. Those would not be covered by the Bill, yet they were the bulk of the attacks. This Bill is irrelevant to them.