Draft legislation for 'Martyn's Law' will be published by the Government within months followed by the introduction of a Bill to the House of Commons, the Home Secretary has said.
Suella Braverman revealed the update as she addressed MPs and delivered a statement on the Manchester Arena bombing following the publication last Thursday of the third and final report arising from the long-running public inquiry into the atrocity, which laid bare the radicalisation of mass murderer Salman Abedi and said MI5 missed a 'significant opportunity' to take action which could have prevented the attack.
Any new law - named in memory of victim Martyn Hett and launched following a campaign by his mother Figen Murray - will require public venues with a capacity of more than 100 people to introduce training and measures to combat terrorism or face sanctions.
The law will place venues under a legal duty to draw up specific security plans for any terror attack. The second tier of the proposal covers bigger venues with a capacity more than 800 which will be required to carry out a risk assessment as part of a 'thorough security plan'.
The government has promised to provide training and an inspection and enforcement regime to ensure venues abide by the law and sanctions for 'serious breaches'.
The Home Secretary said: "In relation to Martyn's Law, the Government will publish draft legislation for scrutiny in the spring and after that introduce a Bill to the House as soon as parliamentary time allows. Its progression after that is dependent on the approval by Parliament and agreeing a day for its commencement."
She described the Bill as 'one part of our extensive efforts across Government including those of the police and security services to combat the threat of terrorism'.
Private and public owners of venues and sites currently have no obligation to act on free advice given to them from specialist counter-terrorism advisers about threats of a terrorist attack and how to mitigate the risk.
The Home Secretary earlier told the Commons that the conclusions from the Manchester Arena inquiry's latest report 'require careful consideration'.
Ms Braverman welcomed an apology from MI5 and recommendations from the inquiry for counter-terrorism police, but added: "While this is welcome and the Home Office will work at pace with both organisations to act on the chairman’s recommendations, we must not lose sight of the fact that responsibility for the attack lies with the bomber and his brother."
She insisted the Government had 'made a number of changes to how we deal with and seek to prevent terrorist attacks' since 2017.
She reiterated her plans to reform the Government's Prevent counter-terrorism programme, telling MPs: "Prevent will focus on security, not on political correctness, and its first objective will be to tackle the ideological causes of terrorism.
"Work is currently under way to develop a new faith security training scheme to raise security awareness among faith communities and help them to mitigate threats. We continue to engage with faith organisations and security experts to develop this scheme."
Ms Braverman said the Government would be doing everything in its power to implement the recommendations of the report, saying the Home Office would 'work at pace'.
The Home Secretary said the country should be grateful for the 'patriotism and courage' of the security services, saying since 2017, the year of the Arena attack, MI5 had disrupted 37 'late-stage attack plots'.
"It is vital that we understand what happened and what lessons we need to learn because we must do everything possible to prevent a repeat of this outrage," she added, saying MI5 had said sorry.
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