On 12 September 2024, the UK’s new Terrorism (Protection of Buildings) Bill was introduced into the House of Commons, with a second reading following on 14 September 2024.Day October. There will now be a committee stage, followed by a third reading, and the same stage will be repeated in the Lords before the bill receives royal assent and becomes law. As is often the case in counter-terrorism, the bill enjoys cross-party support in the UK. Chancellor Rishi Sunak then pledged to bring the new laws into government, including in his final royal speech in November 2023 before calling an election. New Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also been a long-term supporter and has written to Figen Murray. – A key advocate – and promises to introduce it as soon as possible ahead of his successful election. Therefore, it is almost certain that this bill will become law, probably in early 2025.
The bill has been long overdue, with the first draft bill being published in May 2023, a pre-legislative scrutiny by the Home Affairs Select Committee in summer 2023 and a public consultation in early 2024. If passed, the Protect Duty would represent the most far-reaching changes to the UK’s counter-terrorism regime since 9/11. This is no small achievement, considering that significant counterterrorism efforts have already occurred during this period, with seven major counterterrorism bills passed by Congress since 2000.
The new law, also known as Martyn’s Law after Martyn Hett, the son of Figen Murray and one of the victims of the Manchester Arena attack that left 22 people dead, imposes significant new legal responsibilities on owners, staff and security personnel. will be charged. Hundreds of thousands of employees. Shops, restaurants, libraries, community centers and other public spaces will be an essential part of the UK’s fight against terrorism. These locations must now take ‘reasonably practicable steps’ to prepare for and deal with terrorist incidents.
Two tiers are proposed in the bill submitted to Congress. Venues with a capacity of between 200 and 799 people will have a standard tier, with fewer requirements focused on logistics and limited training requirements. Venues with a capacity of more than 800 people are in the enhanced tier and must take wider protective measures. Protect is expected to cost £2.1 billion, with the additional costs affecting almost 200,000 premises, dramatically expanding the reach and scope of the UK’s counter-terrorism framework.
The bill is believed to be a necessary measure given the changing landscape of recent political violence. The main driving force behind the bill is the apparent shift from group-based organized terrorism using relatively sophisticated means such as IEDs and weapons to the sometimes diffuse and unpredictable violence of self-radicalized lone actors using low-tech violence. It’s a transition. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament:
Publics can target a wide range of public places and spaces. We also know that terrorist threats have become less predictable and that potential attacks have become more difficult to detect and investigate. That’s why it’s important for everyone, including those running facilities and events, to take part in the measures taken to keep people safe (Hansard 2024).
Under the new Protect Duty scheme, venue owners and staff will now be identified as vital and active contributors to UK national security in countering terrorism.
One way to think about Protect is as a significant acceleration of two existing trajectories in the context of post-9/11 counterterrorism. First, it advances the legal expansion of counter-terrorism responsibilities evident in the UK’s existing counter-radicalization framework, Prevent. The framework created a new duty on public sector workers, such as teachers and health professionals, to identify people at risk of being ‘radicalized’ and intervene in the earliest moments before a crime occurs. Second, extensive efforts are continuing to assign ‘responsibility’ to ordinary citizens as ‘detectives’ or ‘stakeholders’ in the process of ensuring safety from terrorism. We see this, among other things, in terrorist information campaigns. Look, Talk, Sort – and the same goes for public communication efforts by police and public authorities.
Despite these broad trends, there are new and different elements to Martin’s law. The main point is that while previous legal obligations, such as the duty to prevent, focused on the public sector and expanded to some extent existing legal responsibilities, such as protection, Martin’s Law brings about a much wider spread of private undertakings. Volunteer sector. Much of the pre-legislative scrutiny before the Home Affairs Committee has focused on the likely impact on small voluntary associations (which may explain why the size of eligible places has increased from 100 to 200), but some of the biggest impacts have been It is as follows: It feels like a bigger place where it may be necessary to enact significant change. It could be argued that Martin’s Law is not much different from health and safety laws, which impose legal requirements on public and private places to ensure the safety of both public and workers. While this may be true in legal form, Martin’s Law also makes such venues liable for the following factors: national security. The guidance on the bill states that because the bill concerns ‘national security’ (a reserved rather than devolved matter), Martin’s Act will apply to all four UK nations.
The proposed legislation raises broad questions that require urgent social science research. First, will the measures be effective? While defenders of the bill see it as a cost-effective way to save lives, critics have expressed concerns that it could replace rather than eliminate sources of violence. Since airport security was tightened after 9/11 and the liquid bomb plot in 2006, there has been a marked shift in terrorist attacks targeting “softer” targets and using lower technology to carry them out. The wave of knife and vehicle attacks that occurred in Europe in 2016 and 2017 can be seen as a response to the changed security environment. If Martin’s Law “succeeds” into law, how will the UK ensure that violence and attacks do not simply migrate to other, less protected areas? Or will ‘reasonably practicable measures’ save lives?
Second, can “ordinary” citizens protect Britain from terrorism? How effective can individuals who lack extensive training in security and counterterrorism be in handling and preparing for terrorist incidents? While supporters of Martin’s Law emphasize that much can be achieved through relatively simple measures, such as having a plan in place so all employees know when an incident occurs, critics have pointed out other problems with training. An independent reviewer of terrorism laws has expressed concern that the Martin Act could have unintended consequences.
This bill invites all types of members of the public to become counterterrorism experts. If there’s an attack by a certain ethnic group, if you ask the general public to be like counter-terrorism officers or take a counter-terrorism stance, people will say things like, “Well, people of that ethnicity won’t come in,” or “We’ll do additional searches for people of that ethnicity.” There is a danger of starting to say, “I will.” “I think it comes from that background.” Police and security services have strong legal and ethical systems in place, and those who oversee them, like me, work to ensure that people are not discriminated against. But once you entrust the task of counter-terrorism to hundreds of thousands of citizens, the risk of unintended consequences is quite high (Hall, quoted in the House of Representatives, 2023).
Third and finally, how will the British public react to these new powers? Ultimately, much of its success will depend on how the wider public views these measures and those responsible for implementing them. With the Security Industries Authority (SIA) appointed as the regulator in the Bill, private security services and staff will have a key role to play. To what extent will the public accept and approve of the shift of private security into areas of policing and security that have traditionally been protected by state security agencies? Ultimately, Protect’s success depends on how you, the person it protects, respond to.
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