Violent Crime Reduction Bill

My Lords, this is one of those happy occasions where the speaking notes start with the word ““accept””. I put on record my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Pendry for raising this important issue in our debate of 17 May and for agreeing at that time to withdraw a previous draft of his amendment until after the conclusion of the Government’s consultation exercise. I thank my noble friend for working closely with Home Office Ministers, officials and the sports sector over the summer to finalise the wording of the amendment which he so helpfully tabled today. I am also grateful to noble Lords who have played a part in this, including the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Glentoran. I thank them for making it clear during previous debates that the licensing of security staff at sporting and other events is of cross-party concern. This debate has usefully underlined that point. No one is engaging in political point-scoring here. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that I have form on this subject. I was the Minister responsible for taking the Private Security Industry Bill through your Lordships’ House. I believe that at that time the noble Lord, Lord Cope, warned me of unintended consequences. I gave an assurance that the Bill would not undermine the effective and well regulated stewarding of sporting events, in the way it could have done if we had not had this useful amendment. As my noble friend Lord Pendry mentioned, in March the Home Office published a consultation document which considered the options available for applying the Act to security staff at sports and other events, set out the Government’s views on the options and sought comments on issues related to implementation. The consultation closed on 16 June 2006. The consultation paper made it clear that, "““it is right in principle that the sports and events sector should remain within the scope of the licensing provisions of the Private Security Industry Act””," and it consulted on the options within that, including whether there were arguments for exemptions or exclusions. As previously mentioned, my noble friend Lord Pendry initially tabled this amendment during the consultation period. I am grateful to my noble friend for withdrawing it pending the end of that consultation. Over the summer officials discussed the issue further with my noble friend and the relevant bodies and analysed all the comments received on the issue. In August, the Home Office Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Vernon Coaker, wrote to all respondents to the consultation to let them know of his decision that all in-house staff who carry out security activities in premises covered by the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 or the Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sport Act 1987 should be removed from the remit of the 2001 Act. Ministers have looked at this issue very closely, including at the evidence for and against the licensing of the sports sector and how the requirements of the sports safety legislation reduce risk. There is no evidence of a problem with criminality among the security staff, and no evidence of any public concern about the standards of security staffing. Ministers concluded that the overall risk for events held at premises covered by sports safety legislation is inherently low and that SIA licensing would not bring any significant added value to spectator safety and security over and above that already provided by the safety certificate where one is in force. Consequently Ministers agreed with my noble friend Lord Pendry that officials would work with him to ensure that his amendment to the Violent Crime Reduction Bill removed all those it was intended to remove from the Private Security Industry Act 2001. The amendment of my noble friend Lord Pendry will also cover football. Ministers considered the responses to the consultation that mentioned football, and on reflection decided that the same evidence that applies to other sports also covers football. Ministers announced in 2005 their intention to grant football an exemption, through which the football authorities were required to show that they had equivalent processes in place to those imposed by the SIA. The two key gaps which were identified were about training on conflict management and criminal records checks, and action by the football authorities to address those gaps was required as a condition of the exemption. The football authorities have undertaken to voluntarily work to those same standards under the amendment. That makes the system much more straightforward without losing any of the safeguards that would have been required under the exemption. This is being addressed through an affirmative order that will amend secondary legislation to give the relevant football bodies the power to undertake CRB checks on football security staff. Work has already begun on this, and it is expected that it will come into force in December. My noble friend Lord Pendry asked whether the Government would issue formal guidance notes on how the new measures would apply. Officials are still working on the final regulatory impact assessment, which will be published later in the autumn and which will include more detailed information. But it is important to remember that not everyone who works as a sports or events steward needs to be licensed. Those who do not need to be licensed include volunteers, ticket collectors and all safety stewards who do not undertake any guarding responsibilities. Broadly speaking, in-house security staff do not need to be licensed unless they work as manned guards in licensed premises, work as wheel-clampers, provide security services under contract to a third party, or supervise certain other licensable persons. The Home Office is also developing draft frameworks that will set out the approach that the Secretary of State will take when considering applications for removing activities from the scope of the 2001 Act under the various routes. Those will be published later this year. The organisers of other events that do not take place in sports grounds covered by the amendment will then be able to make applications against those frameworks. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Pendry and to all others who have contributed to the debate. I undertake to write to him on his second question, because I want to make sure that the clarification that he seeks is more precise, and I will of course share that correspondence with other noble Lords who have expressed an interest in the issue. I give notice that I am entirely happy to accept the amendment.