Amesbury Incident

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord raises a very important point, because he will remember that, last time, they were clad from head to toe in special suits to stop contamination. Their welfare is of the utmost importance. They risk life and limb to attend these things, and I assure him that their health and welfare is of the utmost concern to us, and we have of course put measures in place to ensure their safety.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My noble friend will be aware that the UK Armed Forces have trained for a very long time to be able to counter chemical weapons attacks. The training is not very pleasant. My noble friend Lord Robathan and I will both have stood in a CS gas chamber and been told to eat a dry biscuit. It is not fun training.

We have a range of technologies available to detect and counter chemical agents. A persistent nerve agent can normally be detected by hand-held equipment, which is held at unit level. Am I right in believing that Novichok cannot be detected in that way? Does that partially account for why the clean-up operation has been so time-consuming and difficult, and why the authorities were unable to find any discarded equipment? They could go to obvious places where it might have been discarded, but it was very difficult to detect.