G20 and Paris Attacks

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this. Following the Mumbai attacks and the intelligence we had after that about potential attacks in this country, a lot of work was done to make sure that our armed response vehicles have a sufficient number of people to meet the challenge in any of our major urban areas. We keep this under review. We are studying what happened in Paris. We are looking at the numbers that we need. I do not think the idea of routinely arming all the police in our country is the right approach, but certainly increasing the number of armed police that are available is something that we are looking at very carefully and something that, if necessary, we will do. While we do not talk about the role of our special forces, they are also available to help in these circumstances. We will do everything we can to make sure that they can be brought to bear at the right moment and can help with our overall effort in dealing with what are extremely challenging problems thrown up by what happened in Paris.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that full responsibility for the attacks in Paris lies solely with the terrorists and that any attempt by any organisation to somehow blame the west or France’s military intervention in Syria is not only wrong and disgraceful, but should be condemned?

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear.