SIR – Outrageously, “Ministers have agreed to exempt in-house football club stewards from licensing by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) under the Private Security Industry Act 2001 on the grounds that suitable alternative arrangements, equivalent for all practical purposes so far as the protection of the public is concerned, either are – or shortly will be – in place.”

Will someone, and preferably one of those Ministers, explain why this only applies to in-house? Yet again the private security firms are being hit with a bloody big stick. Only this time they are ramming that stick up our rear ends, complete with barbs.

We will seemingly have to comply with “…suitable alternative arrangements…”. I do not have a problem with that. However, our operatives will also be required to hold an irrelevant SIA licence simply because we are not in-house. In other words, if you are a football club and hire in-house, put your operatives through the Certificate of Events and Matchday Stewarding and eventually carry out Criminal Records Bureau checks, that’s OK?

However, if you are a sub-contractor, accredited with ISO 9001, inspected by the UKAS-accredited National Security Inspectorate to its Gold Award level (which will probably ensure a passport into the SIA Approved Contractor Scheme) and you have previously been approved by the Football Licensing Authority to deliver the (now redundant) Football Stewarding Qualification, guess what? You are no longer welcome. You are not good enough, even given all of that Best Practice stuff. You will not have to procure licenses for all of your part-time weekend workers!

We are still contaminated by all that was allegedly bad in the Private Security Industry, and we are never going to be forgiven. Those unforgiveable sins, according to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State – namely Lord Bassam of Brighton – are as follows (I quote here from Hansard 620, Cols 574-602, Monday 18 December 2000):

“The Private Security Industry Bill proposes that individuals in the manned guarding sector should be licensed if they are providing services under contract to a client. We do not propose to require them to have licences if they are employed in-house by companies. These companies will already have satisfied themselves about their employees.

“The Government does not wish to foist onto them an additional layer of checking where it is not necessary. An important subset of the manned guarding sector regulated by the Bill is door supervisors, who are required to screen people entering pubs and clubs. There are professional and reputable companies and operatives providing door supervisor services, but the fact that door supervisors operate most often at pubs and clubs – and particularly at venues where young people are likely to gather – has unfortunately meant that, on too many occasions, disreputable and sometimes criminal elements have infiltrated the sector.”

Wait a minute! “These companies will already have satisfied themselves about their employees”… So an ISO 9001 company inspected against BS 7858 and BS 7499 does not? Lord Bassam’s outrageous assumption is a breathtaking demonstration of ignorance. What a pity he is not elected to his position of eminence. He would have to stand for re-election at some time, and then he might have to answer for his neglect. When were these “bouncers” ever regarded as a “subset of the security guarding sector…”? Clearly, the SIA has never held this opinion, and that is why it created a separate licensing category for door staff. The SIA even thinks this category is so special that if you have that particular group’s licence you can also operate in the manned guarding sector.

That said, the same is not true in reverse.

Lord Bassam, may I remind you, said: “And the Government do(es) not wish to foist onto them an additional layer of checking where it is not necessary.” He was referring to those companies who “… will already have satisfied themselves about their employees.”

How, exactly? I will bet a fiver that none of them will be operating to, or complying with, BS 7858? If that is so then why does this Government “wish to foist” onto us “an additional layer of checking (training and licensing) where it is not necessary”?

Let’s go Back To The Beginning for a moment or two: “The Government’s Proposals for Regulation of the Private Security Industry in England and Wales, CM 4254 (26 March 1999)”. Paragraph 5.4 of that document stated: “This will include contract and in-house (directly employed) security personnel. The Government believes that to exclude in-house security personnel from the scope of licensing would create an unacceptable loophole and reduce confidence in the system.”

They were absolutely correct. The “unacceptable loophole (has) reduced confidence in the system”. So what induced Lord Bassam to overturn clause 5.4? More importantly, why didn’t other Ministers stop him from doing so?

Given that former Home Secretary David Blunkett has been called a “lying backstabber” and his successor, Charles Clarke, referred to as a “chump” by former colleagues, my guess is that the former will probably not answer the question frankly. As for the latter, he probably doesn’t understand the question anyway.

From March next year those companies who supply part-time stewards will no longer be able to do so. They will not be able to face the expense, the prospect of trying to cajole part-timers into attending extra training and paying £190 for an irrelevant licence.

Why can’t the SIA allow the Level 2 qualification – the Certificate of Matchday and Event Stewarding – to underpin the core competencies of a licence for stewarding only? All you would then have to do is place stewards into a different category just as the SIA has done for those sinful and criminal ‘bouncers’.

That said, the Certificate of Matchday and Event Stewarding is seriously flawed, given that it contains a module on restraint. If my understanding is correct, they are going down the ‘control and restraint’ path. That path is dangerous and unnecessary, particularly so when there is a tried-and-tested system that enables pain-free compliance. Yes, pain-free. Their alternative will at best end in tears and, at the very worst, death.

Just as people have died in custody from positional asphyxia, for example, when being controlled and restrained zealously.

From March 2006, the safety of the general public will be compromised thanks to Lord Bassam and his bunch of barmy Ministers, while good quality stewarding companies will go out of business. However, the fewer stewards that remain will be in-house and have gained new skills. How to break fingers, wrists and arms among them.

The latest comment from the SIA regarding the in-house licensing issue is that the Regulator “…appreciates the strong philosophical arguments that in-house security should be regulated…” How kind of them. If “philosophical argument” is defined as “meeting trouble with level-headed detachment” then do it now, not in 2006 as the SIA is suggesting.

We in the industry cannot allow this farce to continue, and have peoples’ safety at sports grounds compromised and companies threatened with the loss of their business.

Why did the politicians not remain with first principles? I recall again the statement: “The Government believes that to exclude in-house security personnel from the scope of licensing would create an unacceptable loophole and reduce confidence in the system.”

I suspect the operative word here is ‘believes”...

Jon Elliott, Director, Matrix Security

Source

SMT