SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, my guest today is Fegan Murray. In May 2017, her son Martin was one of the 22 people killed in the Manchester Arena attack. He was 29. 18 months later, Fegan went to a concert in Manchester, a venue of about 3,000 people, and walked straight in. Nobody checked a ticket, a bag, anything. She went home, looked for the law that said venues had to do something about this and found there wasn't one. So she set about her campaign. She did a master's encounter tourism. She sat through the public inquiry. She walked 200 miles from the arena to Downing Street, and in April last year, the Tourism Protection of Premises Act got royal assent. Everyone in our industry knows it as Martin's Law. From April 27, it will apply to every venue and event in this country with 200 people or more in it. If you run a venue, organise events, or do safety for a living, this is going to land on your desk. Vegan was awarded an OBE for this work. She describes herself as a member of the public who found a gap in the law.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Thank you for having me on your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

It's good. So tell me a little bit about um Martin. What was it like?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Hmm. I think my husband described him the best when he refers to Martin as a one-man party. Um and uh he absolutely was a party animal. He had the most incredible sense of humour, but was also incredibly kind and uh caring and um was just so fun to be around, honestly. It's um he's sorely missed.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, tragic, yeah. So we'd just like to get to know your your personal story a little bit because we've I've seen you in so many podcasts and webinars and interviews with the SIA and things like that. So it's just great to have you on a one-on-one. So again, thank you. So you were you were a counsellor for 20 odd years, weren't you? Um, what do you know about security before 2017?

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Well, absolutely nothing at the time. I was uh running my own business as a a uh therapist, as a life coach and clinical supervisor. I was supervising other people. I had been teaching the subject at college, run a college department for several years. I was very engaged in the therapeutic world. In fact, at the time Martin died, I was in the process of finding, looking for premises to set up a service for Greater Manchester for hoarding clients, because that was my specialist area. I was really keen to develop in Manchester. And the day Martin died was actually very sadly my last working day ever in that industry.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, tragic, yeah, life-changing. Yeah, no. Yeah, well, sorry about what you what you had to go through. Um you said in one of your um interviews that you're naturally shy. So, how does a shy person end up walking to Downing Street from Manchester?

SPEAKER_03 3:20

So, running my own business as a therapist suited me because I was in my basement and worked with people mainly on a one-to-one basis. Um, and uh that really suited me because anything above five, six people was too uncomfortable for me. Um but weirdly enough, when Martin died, that kind of changed. About three months after Martin died, my this is before Brexit, my then member of European Parliament came to visit me. And he said, Look, I've known about what happened to you, we're doing something in Brussels at the European Parliament. Would you come and talk about what happened? And I heard myself saying yes, and then two, three weeks later I was in Brussels talking at the European Parliament. That was the first of my public speeches. I was still in shock. That's probably that that helped probably being brave enough. Uh, but I have since then been to the UN and I've spoken at many, many big events, European and international events now, and continue to do so.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Really? Wow, I've been to the UN as well then. Yeah. Interesting. That that first um trip that you mentioned, was that before you went to the gig that prompted you to do something? So was that?

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Yes, it was only three months after the attack, so I was still kind of in a daze and in shock and a bit zombie-like. Um so I was fairly on automatic pilot when I went to Brussels. Um the um the visit to the concert happened uh 18 months after the arena atta um attack, um, because my children bought my husband some concert tickets as a Father's Day gift in 2018, a year after what happened, but the concert wasn't until that December. That would have brought it to 18 months after, and that was the first time we went into Manchester socially.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

How do you feel about going to a concert at the same place?

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Well, it's thankful it wasn't at the Manchester Arena, it was at a very small, much smaller venue that holds 3,000 people. Wasn't looking forward to it, but obviously my husband was keen to go. And I do remember getting ready and changing my bag to the smallest handbar to naively thinking it'll make the bug search easy.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, wow. And and and as you said, it that that didn't happen. There were no searches and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

No, that never happened. And in fact, when uh my husband got the tickets out, nobody even looked at them. We walked upstairs, sat down, and because it was December, people were obviously Christmas shopping, and the event was um the concert was near a shopping centre, and people had obviously been Christmas shopping. There were there were some people uh three, four seats further down from us with loads of carrier bags in front of them, and I was so terrified really, because I didn't know what was in those bags.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah. And it you'd think things would have changed since then, but actually I was talking to a very large venue who were very diligent in all this, and they had very little changes to make because they were already doing these type of things. But the um venue organizer had taken his wife to a a show, and they said they they did they were the same, they didn't even ask to see the tickets, they just walked in. Um so even now, venues are not are not getting it right.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Yeah. I was at a venue last week, the same thing happened. Nobody checked our tickets or anything.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

No, no. So what so when you'd gone to that concert in Manchester, what did what did you do when you got home that night then? You're obviously very emotional about it and probably angry, I presume, as well.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Uh no, I was never angry. I don't really do anger. I I feel that is not an emotion I find very useful. Um, to be honest, maybe people disagree with me, but um I was upset. I I actually during the concert my husband realised I'm sobbing, I had tears streaming down my face. And he thought at first it's the sad songs that she sings, this lady. And I said, I'm not even listening to the songs, I'm just upset because nobody checked my bug. And I was genuinely breaking my heart that evening during the concert because I thought, how can it be 18 months after 22 people died, a lot of them children, here we are in the same city after what happened, and it's business as usual, and nobody cares about security. I felt they were all forgotten already, and I found that really hard.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

But that's what made me then research during the rest of December and security at venues. That's the first time I became curious.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

And yeah, and found that there is no law, that security at venues is a uh uh it's a recommendation in a government document, which I found really distressing.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah, yeah. So why a master's degree? Most people would have written to their MP or done something.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Well, I didn't do the masters because of Martin's law. I did the masters for different reasons. I knew nothing about terrorism or security. But when Martin died right from the word go, I thought, whoa, what is terrorism? Who are these people? Why do they do what they do? How would why why would somebody blow themselves up and kill themselves? What's the point in that? Um who are uh these different uh ideologies, what are the different methodologies? I heard all these words but didn't know what it meant. And I was curious about whether the police, the government, other governments do anything about terrorism. And I wanted to know how it all started and the history of terrorism. And I realized the only way I'm gonna find out all this information was to study the subject. Then an opportunity came up for me to do a two-year masters, and I grabbed it and got all the answers and more. And thank goodness I did the uh masters, because little did I know that two years down the line I will be talking to prime ministers, home secretaries, and security ministers. At least I can talk in a professional manner about it.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Fabulous, yeah. What what a long way you've come from that shy therapist in my Yeah. Yes. So going back to April last year when it actually came through the Royal Ascent, how how did that make you feel?

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Um obviously very, very pleased uh because I hadn't realized when I did my online campaign in uh January 2019, uh, which was only meant to be a six-month campaign and then it would automatically cease. I thought that would be it. I was so naive in those days as before I studied. Um I thought, well, if I get enough signatures on my online campaign, the government surely will set up this law. And of course, that's not the reality at all, silly me. But uh I had no idea that that six month online campaign will turn into an exceedingly busy full-time job. I don't think I've ever in my whole life been as busy as now.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Yeah. No, well, well, well done, and thank you as well. Because I know your mission is to get the message out there so that venues have adopted all this by the time the compliance starts. So that's that's a big job. But the only way it'll be out there is doing things like this, won't it? Getting the message out there.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Yeah. Yes, a bit like Tesco, every little helps.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yeah. Um when we were chatting earlier, you mentioned something about um where we're finding that venues they know about it, um, but they're kind of thinking, well, we'll get this season out of the way. This we're hearing this a lot, we'll get this season out of the way, uh, we'll start to think about it sort of early next year. Um to us that's far too late because if you start bringing procedures, how do you train your staff, you know, make sure your documents are all correct and so on. Um you know, why is it do you think that venues are are holding back a bit?

SPEAKER_03 11:49

Well, probably finance. Um, they're worried about spending money. They're also maybe thinking, oh, they've got plenty of time till the implementation period is over. But like you said, you know, time's ticking very quickly. And uh if you don't train yourself and get your documentation ready, you've almost missed the boat and you can get yourself in trouble uh by not acting quickly. Um and I wouldn't care, but there's so much information out there on the internet now. The home office, the SIA, there's this absolute stack-loads of information. There's free training, free-of-charge training out there. So uh if venues don't start looking at that very, very soon, um, they'll land themselves in trouble. Um, unfortunately, one of the big things that is not mentioned by anybody, but I'll mention it here now, and and I'll try and say it whenever I can. People need to remember that the security sector knows about it, the government knows about it, but the general public, the ordinary person on the street out there, don't know about Martin's Law yet. If you asked a hundred people, have you heard of Martin's Law? I'd say 90, 92, 93 would say, I've never heard of it, what is it? Three or four may say, I've heard the term, may have seen you on TV talking about it, but I can't remember what it's about. Don't know what it's about. And two or three people may say, I know what it is, and that simply will change once uh the government run a public awareness campaign because they haven't informed the public yet. They can't do it too early, um, because otherwise, you know, the general public, if they're unhappy, they'll go on social media and that can damage venues and reputational damage, etc. So they can't do that too early. But once the implementation period is over, the general public will be told about this. Once the general public know they have a legal right to security, they will demand that right. And if they see uh this not happening, if they go to menus and it's not happening, I'll tell you what, they'll be very quick on their phones and go on social media and name and shame venus. So actually it's at people's own peril whether they get on it or not. Now now is the time.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

That's really, really interesting and important because as I said, when we're talking to venues, there isn't this sense of urgency. Um, and they think they probably won't get fined from the SIA because venues will not they should know now that if they come in and they're not compliant, and probably it's probably not gonna happen a lot because the SIA want to work with venues, don't they, to get them compliant, not just give them them fines. So they're probably thinking, well that's not gonna happen, we'll get a warning or two first. So that's probably not much of a threat to them. Um but what could happen is they could say we're going to stop your event, couldn't they? They can't show that they're compliant, they can stop the event there and then.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

The other scenario is so people have said to me, What if we do a system where people can put a sticker on their door or website saying we are very compliant with the law. You can't do that because that endangers the ones that are not up to standard. Um so you also need to think like a terrorist. So if I saw that, I'd be straight to that venue. And if I felt that the general public start complaining too much about venue uh a particular venue not being up to standard, that's the one that I would go to next to attack then. So um people are not aware of that side of the danger that that they're actually um inviting by not starting this very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And I suppose it only needs somebody that was that's feeling like you did when you saw all them backs and nobody checking your ticket. You only need that dirty and people will be back to the phone.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Yeah, absolutely. They just need to take a photo of it, put it on social media and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

You know. Or they may photograph a security guard who's on their phone and say they're not paying attention. And a terrorist would love that, they'd go straight to that venue. So uh it it is um yeah, it you need to be aware as a venue that this sort of thing could happen. And as I said, the power of social media and the general public are not a good combination for your reputation if you don't do your job right.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Yeah, yeah. I know some people oh well, just before I ask that, um on on your side, it vent it mentions that venues shouldn't have to be paying consultants until the guidance has come out. And we don't certainly want consultants jumping on saying you've got to do this, this, and this until the guidance is out. But it kind of did come out in April almost, didn't it? We kind of venues know what they should be doing. So uh has your advice changed on on what venues?

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Um Right. So it's up to the individual organization whether they want to pay for extra training, extra services, of course. At the moment, the only people who can tell you definitely if you are Martin's law compliant or not is the SIA. The guidance is there to support and help you. There's free training, free fact sheets, there's new animations. In fact, I'm going uh to be speaking at LinkedIn later today to tell people about more information that's been distributed. So the home office are constantly issuing more information, they're running roadshows, SIA is running roadshows, they're running webinars, so all the information you need actually is already freely available. What I have an issue with is companies uh using my name, my photo, Martin's photo, never asked me for permission, which I would not give anyway. Uh certainly not Martin, he's dead, he can't speak for himself. But as his mum, I would say you absolutely do not use Martin's photo. Um, but even my photo being used, I object to that because it may look as if that means I have connections to that company, or I have endorsed their product or service, or I, heaven forbid, financially gain from it. And and that is not the fact. I've also been approached by companies offering me 15% of their takings if I endorse their service or product. I've been um uh approached by saying uh well, we'll we'll we'll pay a charity to your to your liking, uh, fifteen percent of our income. I don't want all that. I just don't want them to use my photo and Martin's photo. I have no connection to these people.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

No, that's important.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

Um Yeah, and it's unethical to do so. And uh um I did seek legal advice. It would literally cost me thousands of pounds to stop that from happening.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

I've noticed, and I'm not gonna I'm not pointing out any specific company, but I've noticed a few domains popping up like martinslawcompliance.com, you know, all these sorts of things. And in a way that's that's doing the same thing, isn't it? It's using Martin's name uh in an advert in an advert, really. A URL is an advert.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Yeah, and I can't stop it, unfortunately, and it's up to the individual organizations and their ethical values that um well there's there's nothing I can do about it. I can't stop them. But they need to ask themselves if what they do is actually ethical. And uh, you know, there's many ways of describing the legislation without having to use Martin's law. It's got a proper name, why not use the proper official name?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah. Yeah, because how do you how do you feel? I mean, it the a lot of these laws that have been brought in through the situation, been through names, the individual, it's easy to remember, but uh uh um there was the 22 people in total, weren't there? So we shouldn't forget them or as well.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

So I've been criticized um online uh in the early days. Why is this called Martin's law? Why not? Um there are 22 people who died, not just your son. What I say to that is first of all, it wasn't my decision to call it Martin's Law, it was the government who decided to call it that. Because I was told right from the word, go, this will not be in your son's name. And it was Swala Brahman and Tom Tulgenhardt in a meeting in December 2020, who said to me, by the way, we've decided to call it Martin's Law, in addition to the the official name. We will refer to it as Martin's Law in government because of the work you've done. That's one point I want to make officially. The second point is um as families, as bereaved families, I've asked the bereaved families on a chat forum that the police had set up set up if they object to the name, and they all said no. And I'm also as a family of Martin, we did not, like many other families who lost loved ones in the attack, a lot of them have set up foundations, charities, etc., in their child's name. Now we haven't done that. I have not got time to run a charity in Martin's name or a foundation. And I chose to work on this legislation which will hopefully benefit the whole nation and other countries because this is now going global anyway. Um so that was more my aim, and as I said, it was never my decision to call it Martin's Law.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

No, no. And yeah, thank you for explaining that. Yeah. Um just you don't kind of have to answer this because it we might not know the answer, but when the SIA starting doing inspections next year, I know the recruiting for people, and you kind of get visions of like Traffic warden, you know, you know, really diligent, you know, and some not being diligent and some could walk into a venue and be a little bit clever and say we're not happy with this, this, and this. How do you do we know what these inspections might look like? Have you any insight on that?

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Yeah, I have a fairly good idea. Initially, it's not gonna be a punitive thing. Uh, they're not gonna come in because this is so big and so new and so overwhelming for a lot of organizations. Uh, SIA are not gonna be heavy-handed right from the road go and barge in and say, right, you've not done this, that, and the other, we're gonna fine you straight away. They're not gonna do that. They're gonna educate people, they're gonna talk to people about what they need to do and give them time to rectify the problem. Now, if they go back and then it's still not done, that's a different story, of course, um, understandably. Um, but initially they're not going to be heavy-handed. Uh, this is not meant to be a punitive action uh by SIA or anybody else or the government. This is all about keeping people safe. And uh, you know, I just want to talk to you about the Manchester Arena Inquiry, because you could find yourself as a venue in front of an inquiry team, in front of very, very uh Rottweiler-like barristers who pull you to pieces if you don't have your paperwork in order, if you have not put measures in place like you were meant to do. So this is serious stuff, you know. It's uh and it you just, you know, you're given all the guidelines that you have to do. The government has been very specific. They've the the Section 27 guidance that came out the 15th of April uh earlier this year, they they haven't sunk that out of their fingernails, the government. They have actually consulted very closely with different sectors of all sorts of industries from education, health sector, security sector, venues, maritime economy, you name it, they have sat them together and did this. This Section 27 guidance was in in collaboration with those people. So it's it's it's generated by the industry for the industry, if that makes sense. So um that guidance document is big, it's 140 odd pages long. You need to read it through thoroughly. You may have to read it three, four times, it's so big. And uh the grey boxes in it are case studies that are very relatable. So people should really engage with that document, engage with it, and where do they find that big? Yeah. Um all of the information that anybody needs as a venue or event organizer is on the Protect UK website. The guidance is there, the legislation is there, all the animations are there, fact sheets are there, frequently asked questions are there, top tips, how to prepare yourself, are there everything is there, and as I said, there's more to come. There's two more animations going out this week, and then there's a few more coming soon. So the the government is doing what they can to help people get themselves organized. But it's up to the even individual venues and event organizers to actually engage with the stuff. And and on top of that, they're running absolute loads of webinars, road shows. They're all oversubscribed, but there's a real demand for them. So get yourself on one of those webinars, get yourself onto a roadshow if you are not sure and you need that extra support.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, good. No, it's it's true, and it's it's not complicated either, is it? No. Um and what I know you're doing it, we're doing it as well. We're posting on LinkedIn when these things come up, so help people just be reminded to join them, you know. And then a lot of them I've noticed when you join, you get a recording as well, so you can digest the information afterwards, so it's good. Um yeah, I I really resonate with what you said about the inqu in in inquiry, because I what got me into all this I didn't do a um the counterterrorism course, but um I was auditing our own safety files, which on individually each document stood up well, you know, the emergency preparedness plan, the safety plan, all the documents that we had, each one was written very well. But the more documents you bring in, and this is something venues will have to think of, because when they're bringing in new documents such as an evacuation, an evacuation guide, you know, the hostile vehicle mitigation, they're bringing in more documents. There's a lot more area for inconsistencies to appear. And even simple things like the date of your venue being on one document slightly different to the next. Well the event, I mean, not the venue. So it and I I had visions of something going wrong and being in front of an inquiry and them saying, Well, your date says this on your emergency plan, but on your safety plan, it's got this date on. Uh shall we even bother looking at your plan? So so that's why we set about doing safety docs, you know, because it you have one place that you put your event data on and it goes through your entire document set.

unknown 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Which was just a way of helping you get it right, you're not worrying about the smaller things, and you can concentrate on working your plan with your team, you know, with ac accurate documents. Just you mentioned um about the I just wanted to mention about the the city rooms. Everybody calls it the Manchester Arena attack because people that were attacked were into the arena, but actually it was in the the city room area, wasn't it, which is which you would describe as the grey space, I suppose, now, you know, then you need to think about when people are leaving their event, at what point do they become members of the public? Because until that happens, the venue is still responsible for that. Now, just going to the inquiry, I won't mention any of the companies involved, but the security, the head of security at the arena, told the inquiry we always knew that our jurisdiction was at the bottom of the steps. But the venue itself's check sheet said the entire city room area. So there was an inconsistency in the documentation there or the policy.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

And this is the thing that's really got to be clear, isn't it? Because if your documentation's wrong, how are the stewards, the SIA guards, you know, how are they going to know how well they've got to work from an accurate plan, haven't they?

SPEAKER_03 28:48

Well, at the end of the day, the uh set the uh legislation, uh and it's made very clear in the Section 27 guidance and in the Protect Your K website information, um, that there'll be information out on a responsible person, which doesn't necessarily have to be a physical person, it can be the organization as well. So um it's it's kind of all linked with that. And and what the arena inquiry really unpacked is where some of the flaws and shortcomings are, and obviously the paperwork is one of them. But to be honest with you, that we need to learn from what went wrong at the attack, definitely, and not make the same mistakes again. And to me, paperwork, communication is kind of linked, and paperwork has to be accurate, has to be distributed to everybody concerned in the right way so that everyone has the same information. Any communication, anything changing needs to be made clear by the person communicating the information to others. So to me that goes hand in hand. But actually, we at this day and age, with the technology that we have available and new products and communication systems coming out all of the time, it should be fairly straightforward to uh find a format for that depending on the venue and gray space um is is again something that Section 27 guidance deals with quite a bit. And uh, you know, I really advise people to read that document over and over because it's so crucial, it's like the the Bible to the whole legislation to me. So yeah, gray space is uh is a difficult topic, but at the end of the day, somebody has to be responsible.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

And there's been some sort of plan put in per in place for that. Um even where the venue responsibility stops, you know, if that's physically mapped on a map, even for instance. It has to somewhere, don't it?

SPEAKER_03 30:57

And sometimes there are places where there are different organizations all in the same space, some under the enhanced, some on under the standard uh duty tier. And that that's where the communication and getting together all these places and and working something out together might come into force. But um, as I said, Section 27 guidance gives you so much information on that, and uh I think that's really important. And if you are really unsure and you go on the webinars or on the road shows, you can ask those questions if you really need to have a specific answer for your specific venue because there are people at these roadshows that absolutely know the legislation inside out and can answer that straight away.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah. Do you think it will start with the documentation when the inspections start? Do you think that's the first place the inspectors will go to?

SPEAKER_03 31:54

No, I think there'll be a lot of observation, I think, as well, just generally observing, talking to members of staff and uh looking at documentation and the plan that you have, of course, and your risk assessment. They'll be looking at all of that. But also, I want to point out that over the next few months uh the SAA are are gonna be issuing more helpful information. Bits like probably uh I'll call it template, but I don't think that they're seeing that as a template. But just to set out what what um uh they need to document, for instance, I think they'll give lots of helpful guidance on that.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah. That it's it's an interesting word template, ain't it? Because if you've never if you've not done this sort of thing before, and and I think there are no and I think I do want to mention there's going to be a lot more people doing this that have never done it. And when I mean it might apply to big weddings or funerals, you know, to more than 800 people, it's bringing compliance into events that have never had to do it. So the first thing you want to think is, right, where do I get a template? So a template is a good start, isn't it? Because it'll document all the things you should be thinking of. But it comes becomes from a template to a something that matches your venue and your event specifically. And it's that sort of um message we want to be getting across to people. Start with a template but make sure it's event specific.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Yeah. I mean Martin's Law has never ever been designed to one size fits all, anyway. Every venue is is different, any every event is different, so so what information you need to give may slightly be different from the standard uh other places uh have to put in or give out the information. So uh I so I don't want to use the word template, but what I'm saying is SIA will be giving because they've again, like the Home Office, consulted with the people and are still continuing inviting people to comment on whatever products they issue, whether it is fit for purpose or not. And they invite people to comment or make suggestions. So it is still a collaborative kind of thing before the uh legislation becomes active. So there is time yet to influence that. But also, as I said, they're not using the word template, it's more sort of um more guidance um information and guidance and more helpful material that they're going to be issuing.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and don't don't get me wrong. I mean, I there's I I like that word template. I just think it could gender the wrong approach. As can cut and pasting. So I think it was Dr. Keith Still that I interviewed. We're talking about he he's seen plans that have been cut and pasted from and and that's another thing we need to avoid. I think he was saying that it um it might have been somebody else, but the um like talking about kit a kitchen hat risks, um, but yeah, there were no kitchens at that event, so they're just all kid, you know.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Right, okay. But that's so I would yeah. I would like to think that the inspectors who are going to be hired and employed by SAA are wise to that kind of thing and will pay attention to copy and paste uh uh scenarios, then they won't be very happy if that was the case. And people should simply not do it, they should be honest, because at the end of the day, you know, um a lot of us are parents and uh have relatives, and we none of us want any of our loved ones to die because the paperwork was haphazard and wasn't true to what it the the reality is, and uh it would be a shame if something happened because people weren't honest. So honesty and integrity are really important here. It should be about the safety of people. You know, uh nobody wants to be in my position. Um I bumped into Keir Starmer about 12 months before he became prime minister, and he said to me, Look, I'm the father of two teenage children. How do you even get motivated? And I looked at him and I said, Well, I've got my son's ashes on a bookshelf at home. That's a good motivator. And he teared up and patted me on the shoulder and walked off. He didn't know what to say, but what can you say? But that's my reality. I don't want anyone else in that position. And and nobody should want that for anybody else. And that therefore, honesty and truth, then filling out these documents is really important.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Yeah, absolutely. And we we've talked about reputation to the venue and and cost and things like that. But what you've just said, that it boils down to that, doesn't it? Protecting life.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Um, everything else comes after after that.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

So Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

Yeah, well well, thank you for the the reminders and certainly look forward uh forward to seeing you and wish you all the best for your your goals leading up to April, which I've in one podcast I listened to, you'd said your objective now is to get the message out to make sure venues are uh are aware and gonna be compliant. Is that what what the next few things look like?

SPEAKER_03 37:10

Yeah, I have this uh every little helps motto that Tesco always have every person who knows about Martin's law and starts taking it serious is another person who will make sure people around them are safe, and that is really the ultimate reason why I'm doing it. And um and it's sad that I have to do this work, it's even more sad that I have to do it now abroad as well, because it seems like not only didn't it exist in the UK, but it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, and the world's becoming a more dangerous place, as we all know. Um and extremists are doing their bit to confuse us even more and distribute disinformation and and misinformation which really messes people's heads up. And um we all need to be more security aware, and and therefore this law is now so important.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Yeah, and that that's really good that you that you're doing that, that it's spreading beyond the UK. We I've had a few venues reach out to us for the safety doc side of things when I've said to them, Well, we'll we can look at your existing documents, we don't have any. Seriously, you know, they have no risk assessments, no nothing. People are allowed into massive stadiums with with just well, you know, I think more like you described, no ticket, nothing needed to come in. So it it's a message that needs to go global.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Yeah, absolutely for that. Absolutely, yeah, and it is, sadly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Well, thanks for Eegan. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for joining us. And I know you've got other events today, so I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast again.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

You're welcome, and all the best. We'll see you again soon. If you would like a free trial of safety docs, please visit safetydocs.org.