In May 2017, Figen Murray’s son Martyn Hett tragically lost his life in the Manchester Arena bombing. What followed was a journey of grief, determination, and advocacy that led Figen to campaign for better security measures in public spaces. “I’m the mosquito, and I’m not going anywhere until this is done,” she told ministers, embodying her relentless pursuit of change.
Nick Aldworth, a former Detective Chief Superintendent and counter-terrorism expert, joined forces with Figen, leveraging his decades of experience to shape the draft legislation. Together, they have championed what Nick calls the “three Ps”—policy, politics, and passion—as the foundation of their campaign.
In the latest episode of the RiskACUMEN Podcast from RiskSTOP, Figen and Nick share their journey from tragedy to transformative action. Together, they discuss the story behind The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, also known as Martyn's Law—a proposed piece of legislation born out of the devastating Manchester Arena bombing in 2017—and its implications for businesses and public safety.
Martyn’s Law proposes security requirements for public venues, categorised by capacity, to ensure preparedness against terrorist threats. As Nick explains, “These measures won’t stop an attack, but they will make the outcome so much better than it could have been.” Businesses, especially those managing larger venues, will need to adapt to comply with new standards, including lockdown procedures, physical security measures, and better information management.
This episode isn’t just about legislation—it’s about how personal tragedy and professional expertise have combined to help reshape public safety.
To hear more about their extraordinary journey and the implications of Martyn’s Law for businesses, listen to the full podcast below:
For a deeper dive into the legislation and its business implications, explore our guide to Martyn’s Law.
Podcast Transcript:
SPEAKERS
Johnny Thomson, Figen Murray, Nick Aldworth
Johnny Thomson 00:02
One of the most significant pieces of legislation around protecting people from acts of terrorism is set to become law soon. But who has been the real driving force here, and what's the story behind this change? Hi everyone. I'm Johnny Thomson, and welcome to the latest RiskACUMEN podcast episode from RiskSTOP, which offers thoughtful insight around risk management. Now on the 22nd of May 2017 a terrible event happened in Manchester which deeply affected many people. Two of those people join me today to talk about the Manchester arena bombing, how it impacted on their lives and how it also brought them together as a force for change. Figen Murray tragically lost her son Martyn because of the Manchester attack. And Nick Aldworth is a former Detective Chief Superintendent and national coordinator in counter terrorism policing. Hi Figen. Hi Nick. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Figen Murray 01:06
Hi.
Nick Aldworth 01:07
Hi Johnny, you're welcome.
Johnny Thomson 01:08
Now before we begin, I'd just like to mark where we are in time right now with a hugely important aspect of what we will be talking about today. Right now, we're heading towards the end of November 2024 and the draft Terrorism Protection of Premises Bill is currently making its way through parliamentary process and hopefully heading for royal ascend in 2025. However, before we talk about that, Figen, could you take us back to a time just before the 22nd of May 2017, and tell me what life was like for you and for Martyn, then.
Figen Murray 01:48
Well, do you know what? I'm married with five children, and we had a really bog standard, ordinary, very busy life, because family life with five kids is very busy, albeit three of them, including Martyn, didn't live at home. It didn't make it any less hectic. Martyn in particular, was what I always refer to as my problem child. There was always something that I had to deal with as his mum, because he would get himself into all sorts of situations, not always troublesome, but situations that very often he'd ring me to sort out for him and with him. So he kept me busy, but life was just simply hectic because Stuart and I, my husband, Stuart and I were both working full time, and I had my youngest two still living at home, one at an undergraduate course at uni. The other one was just doing her GCSEs, trying to support them. And, yeah, it was just all very busy, and that all came to a halt on that fateful day very sadly.
Johnny Thomson 02:50
Yeah, of course, we then had that terrible event that I mentioned in the introduction with the Manchester attack. Figen, would you be okay talking about that and just telling me what happened?
Figen Murray 03:03
Yeah, it was a normal Monday. I had been working in my private practice in the basement of my house. I had a classroom. I was teaching there occasionally, but also I was seeing clients on a one to one basis. My husband was at work as a GP in his surgery, and it was just that evening. It was just an evening where nobody really needed me, because my youngest daughter, Nikita, was in her bedroom revising her for her GCSEs. She took her studies very seriously. Louise, she had artwork all over her bedroom floor. She was selecting a few bits and bobs for an exhibition the day after at uni, because that was being marked that exhibition, what she put out there. So she was anxious. Stuart was doing paperwork, so I took the opportunity to go to bed early, and I went to bed at 10 o'clock and read for five minutes and then fell asleep. The first thing I knew was Louise, my 19 year old, waking me with my mobile phone because she was checking to see if people phoned, or if Martyn had phoned or texted me. Because unbeknown to me, he was out at this gig at the arena with quite a few of his friends, and the attack happened unbeknown to us, and his friends all managed to get out, but he didn't, obviously. And they were all anxious and kept ringing us to see if he's been in touch. So that's the first thing I knew about something going wrong.
Johnny Thomson 04:43
Yeah. And, of course, 22 people ultimately lost their lives. Of course, didn't they? And more than 1000 were injured. Some with lifelong consequences. How old was Martin?
Figen Murray 04:54
He was 29 and a half years old.
Johnny Thomson 04:57
Yeah. And, I mean. It's a difficult question to ask, but how do you process all of this at that time?
Figen Murray 05:08
Well, it was, it's really weird, because you, one minute, you are an ordinary person living an ordinary life, and the next minute, you become aware that the future, your entire future, is going to be different. I remember they told us to go to the Etihad Stadium the morning after the attack for supporting information. And I wanted to know where he is, his body is, because I felt the night before that that he'd died, although there was no evidence, I just knew as his mum that he had died. And I just wanted to go there and find out where his body was. But as we were at the Etihad, more and more families arrived who were also looking for loved ones, and the whole room filled up with dozens and dozens of people, all deeply in distress, and more and more of Martyn's friends came, his dad and his step mum arrived. My other remaining children came, and each family was the same, more and more relatives and friends came and joined them. So each table had about 20-30 people around, and all very upset. And I remember looking at Martyn's friends and my kids, and realised in that moment that my future had completely changed. And I thought, life will just not be the same again. And unfortunately, I was right.
Johnny Thomson 06:35
I just can't begin to imagine, how that must feel in that in that moment. Nick, where were you at this point in time? What was your role in policing and can you remember hearing about the Manchester attack?
Nick Aldworth 06:50
I remember almost every minute of that year, to be honest with you, Johnny, even just saying that, it's quite hard. So in 2017 I was a superintendent in the Metropolitan Police Service, and I had just had this incredible, blessed good fortune of being in the ascendancy in my career, and I had landed in one of only two counter terrorism commands inside the Met Police. This particular one's called Protective Security Operations, and it was focused almost exclusively on protecting the public from terrorism and helping prepare them to be more resilient in the event of an attack. And just a few months before 2017 by a quirk of promotions and retirements, I had suddenly found myself elevated to being the commanding officer for that unit. So, it was just something I never saw on the radar, to be honest with you, and was the absolute privilege of a lifetime. And my journey on that year started on the 22nd of March of 2017 when a vehicle drove across Westminster Bridge, killing people through striking them, and then the individual got out of that vehicle, went in through the gates of Parliament and murdered a colleague called PC Keith Palmer. And so from that very second, I had found myself leading a group of about 300 people at a time that sometimes felt like war, and the weeks and months following Keith Palmer's murder, we were consumed with trying to figure out what might be next, and how we might be able to stop that, and what do we need to do. And I worked some big hours over those months. I was occasionally sleeping on my office floor and things like that. And this particular night, on the 22nd of May, I'd actually managed to bunk off early from work. I'd gone home, I'd managed to spend time with my young child, and I'd gone to bed early, and I was lying in bed half asleep, with that classic pose of the book collapsed on my chest. And I won't ever forget my wife came into the room, woke me up and said, I think you need to turn the TV on. And I obviously did that, and there were the BBC News lines running around something happening in Manchester. And I think when you occupy this world, you have an intuition about what things are. And in my mind, straight away, I knew that this had been another terrorist attack, even though it hadn't yet been confirmed. And I jumped into my car and I drove into my office in London. I got there, I think probably just about midnight, I think something like that, because what I realised is that whatever happens anywhere in the UK has an impact on London, not just in the moment, but in the following weeks and moments, and particularly as we'd been, dealing with what would happen in Westminster Bridge only a short while before. But also, we really tuned into this, Johnny, because it had been rolling across Europe for a couple of years. You know, we'd seen attacks in Nice, we'd seen attacks in Berlin. And for me, there was just a reality check that this is with us now, and in particular, "Superintendent Aldworth, this is now on your lap to do whatever it is you have to do to try and protect people in London."
Johnny Thomson 10:33
Yeah, it's interesting. You forget that those events were so close together, you know?
Nick Aldworth 10:39
Yeah, it's amazing how compressed eight weeks becomes when you're busy.
Johnny Thomson 10:44
And Figen then sometime after the attack, something happened, didn't it? That made you well, I guess, call into question whether anything had actually been learned from this horrific incident that took your son away from you, didn't it?
Figen Murray 11:02
Yeah, it was 18 months after, to be honest. The first year, we had sold our house in the first week of May, before Martyn died, and he knew we were going to move because we were downsizing, as my kids were going to uni. And so after Martyn died, we did move in the August, and because I could not continue working after Martyn died, that was also my last working day, the day he died. I literally spent the first year existing. I was very zombie like, I didn't function very well at all as a human being. And during that first year, my youngest daughter came up with the idea to buy my husband a concert ticket of a singer he really likes, as a Father's Day gift in the June but the concert wasn't until the first week in December 2018, about 18 months after the attack. So I do remember that evening very well, because we were getting ready to go, and that was the first time Stuart and I went socially into Manchester, and I changed my handbag to the smallest handbag so I can just literally open the lid and they can look in to make the bag search easy, because I foolishly, very foolishly, assumed that bag searches or any security arrangements are going to be really strict, particularly in Manchester after what happened. And we got to the venue and Stuart gets his tickets out, we walked in, staff turned and looked at us, and then they turned away and carried on talking. He said, "Oh, our seats, it looks like they're upstairs." We walked up, sat down, and that was it. We were sat watching the concert, and of course, I became really distressed because I couldn't even focus on the music or anything. I was crying because nobody had checked my bag, and I couldn't believe that 18 months after 22 people died, a lot of them children. Here we were again, at a music venue, at a music event, and nobody checked my bag, and it felt like a slap in the face. It felt like it's business as usual. They didn't matter anymore. 22 people, nobody cared.
Johnny Thomson 13:25
And was that the moment Figen, that you thought I need to do something about this?
Figen Murray 13:29
Well, not quite. I was very distressed. And it was first week in December. At the time, I was a complete layperson. I knew nothing about security or terrorism. It was all totally new to me. I just had zero knowledge about it, but I obviously became curious, and during the Christmas and New Year period, I started researching security at venues. Came across the contest document, and there it was that security at venues to this day, as we speak, is still only a recommendation at venues, and I find that totally shocking. But in the January, the following January then, it was just chewing away at me, and I thought, I need to do something. So that's when I started my online petition first at my kitchen table. It took me forever to work out how to do it technically, but I managed it, and it was a six month only petition, and then they automatically stop. And during that six months, Brendan Cox phoned me. I didn't know who he was at first, he told me, Jo Cox, his wife was killed in a terrorist attack the year before Martyn and he said, "I've seen your petition, it's the right thing to do. We need this legislation. I can help you get in front of the security minister. Let's do this." And I said, yes, please. And he said, we need a white paper, and I can't do that. I'm more politics than security, but I know somebody who can, and that's how I met Nick on Valentine's Day, 2019.
Johnny Thomson 15:13
Yeah, I was just gonna ask at what point did you first encounter each other? Nick, what was that first meeting like that you had with Figen? How did it come about? How was it? How was it for you?
Nick Aldworth 15:26
Yeah, well, it was scary, if I'm honest. So my journey carried on in parallel with Figen's, up to that point. Throughout 2017 I had to deal with the attack in London Bridge, the failed attack at Parsons Green tube station, and the murder of Makram Ali at Finsbury Park mosque. So my 2017 was unrelenting in its own way, as I'm sure that Figen's was emotionally. I didn't know Figen. I wasn't aware of Figen, but I'd become aware of this boy who was known as the boy with the Deirdre tattoo in the popular media, because Martin had this phenomenal tattoo of Deirdre Barlow on the back of his leg, and he appeared in television programs, Tattoo Fixers and things like that. So I had this vague awareness. And then 2018 we went into a series of inquests, which were brutal, quite frankly, Johnny. And understandably for families looking for answers, inquests can be very, very painful experiences for those giving evidence. And I spent four, four and a half hours giving evidence into the Westminster Bridge inquest, and I won't deny it pretty much broke me. I was pretty broken by the time we got to that point anyway, because of all the pressure we dealt with in 2017 but for some strange reason, people thought I did a half decent job in 2017. I'd be promoted to National Coordinator, so doing effectively the London job but on a national stage. And I got a call from my boss. He said, I'd like you to meet this woman called Figen Murray. And of course, I knew so little about Figen, I didn't even know how to pronounce her name in those days, but at that time, we also had a sense of some of the failings that had been wrapped around terrorism, generally in 2017 but Manchester arena specifically, particularly some of those well known failings that were disclosed during The Kerslake Report. And so when I got this call, my senior police leader head went straight on, which was actually not only have I now need to meet this woman, but I've also got to protect the organisation, because there's a whole lot of liability flying around potentially. It's obviously pre-Manchester arena inquiry. And so I was genuinely quite worried about meeting her. And I was worried on two levels, Johnny. One was this idea of we know mistakes have been made. We know there's liability. I am probably the most senior person that this woman's going to get access to in the short term. Of course, we didn't know how influential she was going to become in due course. But on an emotional level, I had had very brief contact with some victims of terrorism previously, but never anybody quite as intimately affected as Figen had been, and I had found 2017 and 2018 incredibly emotionally damaging experiences, personally. And I thought, how the hell am I going to cope with meeting this woman who came into my office, it's probably about midday, I think it was on Valentine's Day, 2019. It was vile weather outside, windy and blowy, and this poor woman came in a little damp and bedraggled, and I didn't really know what to make of her at that time. She had and has an impactful presence and a profound narrative for why she was there. And it wasn't hard at all for me to turn around at the end of that meeting and say, look, I can't do a lot now because I'm still serving, but I know I'm going to retire soon, because I realised just how broken I was by that stage, and I said, look, let's see what we can do together. But in the meantime, I'd love you to come to a conference in March and speak to 400 people that were going to come, because we've been trying to run a thing called the Step Change program, which was to try and mobilise the private sector to look after itself a bit better.
Johnny Thomson 19:57
And I guess from that, what emerged was ultimately a commitment to you doing something together that would stop this kind of thing happening to others.
Nick Aldworth 20:07
Yeah, so the Step Change conference in March. It took place at a thing organised by government called the Security and Policing Conference down in Farnborough every year. And it was at that conference that I realised just how powerful Figen's narrative is. I mean, there wasn't a dry eye in the house for starters. It was the first time I think, she'd spoken publicly. It was certainly the first time I'd ever heard her speak, and it was the first time I'd ever heard her speak intimately about Martyn and the circumstances she's just described to you, and I was the host of that conference, and I couldn't speak. I had such a large lump in my throat, she had me in shreds of tears. I'm not embarrassed to say that, and to be honest with you, she'd done it many times since, but that's the power of the story.
Johnny Thomson 20:57
So here's a question for you, how do you go about creating a change in the law? How big a challenge has this been to both of you and everybody else involved? And I knew I would get a laugh from Figen!
Nick Aldworth 21:15
How do you do it Figen?
Figen Murray 21:16
I think the word bloody-mindedness comes to mind, and absolutely no way of backing down. In fact, the first time I met with the Minister, when you Nick, Brendan and I went to see Brandon Lewis, the First Minister we met. And Brendan leaning forward, saying to me, Figen, is there a final word you have to say for the minister before we end the meeting? And I looked straight at the minister and said to him, "Well, Minister, as you can see, I'm a small person, but I did read somewhere, if you think small is not effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito." And I said, "I'm the mosquito, and I'm not going to go anywhere until this is done, and I'll be flying around yours and the government's head," and I meant it, and unfortunately, I'm still having to buzz and ain't going anywhere.
Johnny Thomson 22:17
Yeah, because, it's been several years that have passed since then. But it's quite a process to go through, isn't it? And Nick, you've played a significant part here as well, haven't you, of course. In that, I'm right in thinking you've drafted a lot of the initial legislation, yeah?
Nick Aldworth 22:34
Yeah. So the way it works, Johnny, is that lobby groups such as ours or even parliamentarians or even government policy makers. It starts with the white paper, and the white paper is really a relatively high level articulation of what you're trying to achieve. And out of our meeting in 2019 Figen and Brendan had asked me to sort of design what a law might need to look like that would cover what they were trying to achieve. And so I was able to bring my years of protective security experience, and in particular, years of counter terrorism experience to bear on designing something. But more importantly, Johnny, this is all about timing for me, because, you know, we were on the back end of two or three years of incredible violence across Europe, and we really had clarity of thought around what the solutions might be in terms of what we were trying to achieve through this bill. But I have to be really sort of clear on this, that effectively, there are three strands to this campaign, and I always describe them as the three P's. They are policy, politics and passion. And I'm of the view that if you take away any one of those P's, then you have nothing at all. And clearly I'm the gray haired technocrat, and bring the policy to it, Brendan brings the politics to it. And Brendan can open any door in Whitehall. I mean, his little black book is phenomenal. But also his incredible ability to read politics and understand the nature of politics, and then, of course, you bring this incredible power of passion through a mother and a family who have suffered so egregiously. But if you took away any one of those things, I don't think it would work.
Johnny Thomson 22:40
Are you able to kind of, and I'm conscious of the fact that we're not at the point yet where the new protect duty is in place, but can you give me a high level overview of what this law will do?
Nick Aldworth 24:58
So Johnny the law is basically a requirement for publicly accessible locations to take effective procedures and measures to protect people from the risk of terrorism, and it does that by requiring any premises to which the public have access on payment or otherwise of a capacity of 200 or more to undertake, first of all, procedures, which are simple measures that we know can save lives in the event of an attack. Most simple measures are described as a minimum of being the ability to lock down, the ability to invacuate, the ability to evacuate and the ability to communicate the needs to do those things, and the how to do those things. And I can vouch for the fact that across all the terrorist attacks that I've looked at and seen, those four things, they won't stop a terrorist attack, but they will make the outcome of it so much better than it could or would have been. And then there's a requirement for premises that have more than 800 people likely to be on the premises at the same time to do more. And they describe those as measures. So these are very much your physical actions that you need to take, and the minimum requirement, there will be the ability to monitor the premises and the vicinity. And you know, the purpose of that is clearly to identify suspicious behavior or evolving threats. The ability to control movement, both into and within the premises. To have effective physical safety and security measures. So that's very much your locks, bolts, doors, windows activity, and to manage information securely. Now that latter one is an interesting one, because one of the things that we know is that all terrorist attacks start with online hostile reconnaissance, and they happen that way because we live in a digital world where we all give away far too much information, and there's a recognition that we need to try and redress that balance in the interest of public safety, it's going to be a difficult one in particular, and without focusing in on that one too much, there's a natural tension between good information security and good customer service, and some of these things will take us a little while to work out. But the essential difference in the law between procedures and measures is that the smaller premises will be required to undertake procedures, which I will always describe as a simple plan, and the larger, the larger premises will be required to undertake measures. And measures exist to actually stop the act of terrorism. So the difference between procedures and measures is one will make an act less impactive, the other should stop it altogether.
Johnny Thomson 28:12
And Figen, from your perspective, you know what are your hopes and aspirations around this new law when it does come into effect, which I imagine for you is, you know, well, it is a testament, isn't it, to Martyn's life.
Figen Murray 28:28
Yeah, my hopes and aspirations. Well, hopefully it'll save lives. In fact, I'm convinced it will save lives, and I never thought it would take as long. But, you know, I've had to learn to be patient. And I think we all have learned, whoever is in the campaign, we've all had to learn that this all takes a long, long time, and we need to proceed slowly but assertively. And the legislation in its present format is, personally speaking, not exactly what I was hoping it would be. So I had a realisation recently that we will need to continue the work beyond when the king has signed the legislation and it becomes an official law, because somehow it now is at a point where there could be loopholes. And certainly it's not as watertight as I personally would like it to be. And I'm sure Nick will feel similar.
Johnny Thomson 29:34
Yeah, and so the mosquito is not going away, just yet?
Figen Murray 29:38
No. Because, you know, if the government goes to all the trouble of putting a law out there, it ought to be in its best format as possible. And I know there have been pressures to make alterations and amendments that, we don't know whether what the end result is going to be, but I have a feeling that by the time the King has signed it, it's not going to look in any way, shape or form, the way we had envisaged it to be. And therefore we will have to continue to push or put pressure on the government and push people to think about it in more depth and make the necessary changes eventually. It'll take time.
Johnny Thomson 30:23
Can I just say you must have learnt so much in recent years. You know, thinking about Nick, this is his area. This is realm of expertise and knowledge and so on. You must have learned so much over this period?
Figen Murray 30:43
Well, for me, as I said earlier, I knew nothing about terrorism, but I had so many questions when Martyn died and the only way I could get all the answers was to educate myself. So I did a Master's in Counter Terrorism alongside attending the arena inquiry and the BD trial in London, but and hard work as it was, I am so glad I did it, because I'm now far more knowledgeable, and it's given me the impetus to completely keep as much up to date with terrorism and the developments within it on a continuous basis. Now, I learn every day.
Johnny Thomson 31:27
And you Nick, what are you hoping to see here, and how can organisations like us at RiskSTOP and the wider insurance industry, for example, what can we do to help here? I know this has been a strong call, hasn't it, for insurance in particular, to get behind this new law and this change?
Nick Aldworth 31:44
Yeah, it's a great question, Johnny. I mean, like Figen, I'm hoping that over time, we'll see further evolutions of the law, and it's not uncommon for law to develop that way. So I'm optimistic. I am actually a little more optimistic, which is really unusual for me, than Figen, which is I actually think this law does and will achieve the outcomes that our original proposal wanted. What it doesn't do is do it on the scale that we wanted, but I think it is an incredible first step, and I think one of the ways that people can amplify its effect is by encouraging people to conduct themselves within good practice guidelines. And while you might not be obligated to comply with a piece of legislation, what you can do is to ensure that your business is run along the same lines. And let's be really clear about that, that's not a nice to have because you want to be socially conscious. It's actually really good for your business, because people go out and they want to feel safe when they go out, they want to go somewhere and not have to worry about all the aggravation of the world around them. And people do become security aware. I see that all the time, you know, Figen and I run fairly active social media accounts, and people are forever reporting bad conduct to us, which is, you know, I think quite telling around people's awareness. And of course, much of what we've asked for is great for other emergencies. So if you live in a large metropolitan area, violence is not unheard of, I'm afraid to say. And the many things that people will do to protect themselves from terrorism, they will almost certainly do to be effective against other crimes as well. And I think the insurance industry can help a lot with that. I think the insurance industry can, well, can certainly enhance the conditions for the sale of products. I think on one level, you know, that sort of commercial level, and that liability and management level, definitely. A big, big role to play there. But I think also on the social conscience level as well, Johnny. Insurance companies have got enormous reach, way beyond anything that Figen and I could dream of having. And I think that sort of exaltation to do the right thing as a social value enterprise has enormous value. And of course, the best thing about that is the government has given you statutory framework upon which to hang that social enterprise. So I think massive part to play. The bottom line is that we are all actually looking for the same outcomes, possibly for different reasons, but we are all looking for that risk mitigation. For Figen and I, it's that journey of not wanting people to be harmed, not wanting other people to go through the awfulness that Figen and so many others have had to go through. But on a commercial basis, it makes solid commercial sense because it protects your business.
Johnny Thomson 35:01
Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right, in particular on the reach point that you mentioned, you know, the opportunity for communication and for education around this area and the wider elements of risk management, as you touched on, really are there, and it is a strong opportunity for the insurance industry to get behind that. So thank you, is what I want to say. Thank you, both of you, for so much of your time today, and Figen I have to say, I'm so sorry for your loss. At the same time, I really hope this new law and the protection that flows from it, which really is about preserving people's lives, isn't it, not just about protecting premises? You know, I hope it all helps.
Figen Murray 35:55
Thank you. Yeah, it is an ironic name, isn't it? The Protection of Premises Bill, and it's actually about people. But I have to say, the majority of the general public at the moment don't really know what Martyn's Law is, and the government won't run a public awareness campaign until after the king has signed it, which is understandable, of course, from their point of view. But once the general public have more awareness of Martyn's Law, they'll do even more of what Nick said. They'll want security even more because they're more aware of it, and that will hopefully mean that more businesses will actually really take Martyn's Laws seriously and give it the importance it needs to protect customers, staff, guests, whatever. You know it's really hoped that everybody will want to feel more safe and we will be more safe, and people will not be in the position my family is in.
Johnny Thomson 37:00
I guess also feel that way that you did when you had your small bag and you were expecting it to be checked as well. Yeah. I guess when there is, when there is hopefully greater awareness of this following the law coming into force, more of the public will feel that way as well, and that will really help to drive things.
Figen Murray 37:20
Yes, that's my hope.
Johnny Thomson 37:23
And you as well, Nick, thanks for your time and everything that you've poured into all of this.
Nick Aldworth 37:28
Well, you're very, very welcome, Johnny. But I think for me, the net gain is actually mine, because I have this amazing person in my life who genuinely has transformed it on so many levels. She'd be embarrassed that I'm saying this, but you know, she's made me a much more emotionally intelligent person. She's made me a much better person. Working with Brendan has made me so much more aware of how politics in this country works, which is an education of itself, but probably more importantly, it's allowed me to bring my career full circle, and allowed me to potentially close off my career with a half decent achievement that has been linked so intrinsically to all I've ever tried to do throughout my professional life, which is to protect people.
Johnny Thomson 38:28
I guess for both of you, it's about taking something so tragic and so negative and really seeking something positive out of that, isn't it?
Figen Murray 38:38
Yeah, and I feel that equally, Martyn's death has brought me not just Nick and Brendan into my life, and I certainly consider them as friends now, but I feel he's gifted me the entire security industry. There's so many, I've made, so many incredible friends now. And as I said, I see that as a gift that Martyn has given me
Johnny Thomson 39:07
Wonderful. Well, thank you again, and I hope it all goes really well. And I don't know perhaps we can revisit the legislation together as well, in a bit more detail when it when it all gets passed as well.
Nick Aldworth 39:21
Absolutely, but with a much better broadband connection.
Johnny Thomson 39:27
Exactly. Brilliant, brilliant. Thanks Nick. Thanks Figen. Thank you. Really appreciate your time. And that brings us to the end of this episode of the RiskACUMEN podcast from RiskSTOP. If you have any questions or comments around the things we've discussed today, or any of our other risk related content, please head to riskstop.co.uk. Thanks everyone for listening in and until the next time. Goodbye for now you.
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