Amesbury Incident

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for making his statement to this House and for giving me prior sight of it. The whole House appreciates that he came here directly from a Cobra meeting. As he said, the first duty of any Government is to secure the safety and security of their people and all those resident in this country. No Government can allow the poisoning of their citizens or residents as they go about their daily lives, by state actors or others. As he has said, the use of chemical weapons is both barbaric and inhumane. Our thoughts and best wishes go out to Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, and we wish them a speedy and complete recovery. I would also like to place on the record the admiration and support we on this side of the House have for the work of the emergency services, the security services and the vital public servants at Porton Down.

The Home Secretary will appreciate how alarmed the public, particularly the people of Wiltshire, must be at this second incident involving the nerve agent Novichok in four months. This incident has occurred long after local people had been assured that there had been a thorough clean-up of the area. We understood that numerous areas across Salisbury had been decontaminated, at great expense and with great thoroughness. It is still not clear whether this is a wholly separate incident or the fall-out from the original incident but with effects being felt months apart.

The Home Secretary will appreciate that if there are connections, other than the type of nerve agent involved, between this latest incident and the Skripal case, the House and the general public will obviously want to know as soon as possible. The House has not received an update on the Skripal case for some time; the Home Secretary may wish to take this opportunity to update the House and the general public about ongoing work on the Skripal case. The House and the public at large will want reassurance, but they will want it to be based on facts. I agree with the Home Secretary that we should not jump to conclusions. We need the facts on this serious matter, and no doubt Members from all parties will resist the temptation to engage in wild speculation or to offer their own guesswork as informed opinion.

Members from all parties, along with the general public, will eventually want to understand how this incident could have occurred. The public will also be concerned about other issues. Do the local police have the resources that they need? Will the Government be providing them and the local authority with additional emergency funding for the enormous drain on resources that this investigation and the securing of various sites will inevitably involve? As well as causing great public concern, this second incident will be a blow to business and retail in the area. Local businesses were just recovering from the Salisbury fallout; what support will they be given? Will the Secretary of State assure the public that this new clean-up and decontamination effort will be exemplary in its thoroughness?

There are some matters that the Secretary of State might usefully raise with his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. Do all relevant emergency workers and health professionals have sufficient information to recognise the symptoms of this type of poisoning? Do they have advice on how to respond to suspected cases? The public will have noted that although Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley took ill on Saturday night and were taken to exactly the same hospital as the Skripals, it apparently took two days to refer the case to Porton Down.

As the Home Secretary said, the eyes of the world are on Russia. We will all have seen the very warm and enthusiastic response of the Russian people to people coming from all over the world for the World cup. The Opposition supported the expulsion of the 23 Russian diplomats and the other related actions that Her Majesty’s Government took in the wake of the Salisbury incident, and we will support any action that the Government take that will keep our people safe. We cannot allow the streets of ordinary British towns and communities to become killing fields for state actors.

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her support and her comments and join her in stating again that the whole House wishes the victims a very speedy recovery. I very much welcome her questions, which I shall try to respond to in turn.

The right hon. Lady asked, perfectly correctly, for reassurance that this incident is not connected in any way to the areas that were decontaminated after the original incident back in March. We are very comfortable that that is not the case—and that is not just the view of Ministers on their own; it is the view of experts, especially the decontamination experts. They are clear that the decontamination exercise was successful, as is Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, and we are happy to say that those areas are all safe. We are also comfortable that, from what we know, in this particular incident neither individual contracted or came into contact with the nerve agent at any of the decontaminated areas. That is our belief.

The right hon. Lady asked whether there was any more information on the connection between this incident and the original incident. That is of course the main line of inquiry for the police, for obvious reasons, but as she alluded to—it is worth restating—none of us should rush to prejudge the outcome of the investigation. As more evidence and any information comes out, we will of course share that with Members and with the wider public.

The right hon. Lady rightly raised the issue of resources, and I can reassure her on that. In fact, one of the main things that we discussed at the Cobra meeting earlier was ensuring that all the necessary resources are made available, as they were back in March. We wanted to make sure that that applied to everyone involved in dealing with this incident, but particularly local police, CT policing and the security services. I am comfortable that any resources required will be provided and any further requests will be met. That will be a priority for us.

The right hon. Lady mentioned the impact on the local area, and she was right to do so. People local to the area were heroic in their response to the original attack and have united, together as a community, and sent a clear message of support for each other. At the time of the original incident, there was a lot of support from the local council, Wiltshire Council, and from local political leaders, including my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who contacted me at the moment he knew about the incident to ask about further support. We are looking at what more can be done. We will meet the leader of the local council, Baroness Jane Scott, and talk about precisely that, and we will also talk about, as the right hon. Lady mentioned, local businesses, many of which were just starting to recover. Whether they are high street shops or part of the local tourist trade, we want to make sure that their business is as unaffected as possible, so we are looking at what further support we can provide to them. The right hon. Lady was absolutely right to raise that point.

The right hon. Lady asked about local health expertise. The Department of Health and Social Care is of course making sure that if any extra resources are required, they will be provided to the health services. It is particularly important that, given that it is where the victims are, Salisbury District Hospital has all the support needed. My current understanding is that in respect of the two victims in this case, the health professionals in the hospital were able to use some of the experience that they gained from March’s incident in their approach, which meant that the right type of medical support was provided earlier than it perhaps would have been otherwise. There is considerable local expertise, but of course if more needs to be provided, it will be.

Lastly, the right hon. Lady asked me about an update on the police investigation into the original case. That investigation is of course ongoing and involves CT policing, local police and the security services, but it would be inappropriate for me to say anything further on that at this point.