Member

The choice for your Lordships in this Committee, for the Government and for any of the venue organisers is: what is your risk appetite for such an attack? What are you prepared to tolerate? The argument from a number of noble Lords is that the limit should be not 200 but 300, 400, or maybe even more than that, but the reality is that you are saying, “Our risk appetite, by accepting that higher number, is that we are prepared to tolerate that number of people potentially being killed because no precautions were taken”. That is not to say that those precautions will have been necessary in every case, but it is a decision that has to be made about risk appetite. That is not easy. Boards and committees I have been on have struggled over what their risk appetite should be, because they do not really want to accept any risk whatever, but that is what you have to do. There is a trade-off between safety and the consequences of putting these obligations on to the people who are organising these events. That is the choice we have to make.