Amesbury Update

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord will remember that back in March we were sure that the incident bore all the hallmarks of a Russian state-type poisoning. We have no evidence that it came from another source, so I think that at this stage we can be fairly sure that the source is the Russian state.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the original advice to residents was correct? Further, does she agree that it is inconceivable that the authorities had not considered the risk of a discarded container? However, would it not have been grossly irresponsible to raise alarm among the general public when there was no possibility of finding the container, with the risk that members of the general public might go hunting for it when they were ill equipped to find it? As we know, there is the difficulty of the poison being very difficult to detect. Therefore, does the Minister agree that the advice and actions of the authorities dealing with this matter have been correct in all respects?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Like my noble friend and other noble Lords, I pay tribute to the police and the health clinicians who have worked on both incidents. Like my noble friend, I think that the original advice to residents was correct: there was, and remains, a low risk. There was no assumption about there being a source of the poison or about the possibility of it still being there, because one would not have known—in fact, one still does not know—that there was a discarded source of the poison. I suspect that local people were not hunting for it, but in the course of the investigation it will become clear how they managed to happen upon it.