Salisbury Incident

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

As the hon. Lady will know, we have been operating at a “severe” terrorism level for a while now—five terrorist attacks got through last year, of course—and we did therefore review police guidelines on unusual substances last year, so I believe that the police have all the right information and tools available to them.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

This country is rightly praised around the world for the dedication of our police and our determination to follow proper process to ensure we come to the right conclusions before then acting with calm deliberation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in these most awful and appalling of circumstances we need those attributes more than ever?

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the professional approach we need to take to this incident. We must support the police, who have such a strong and rightly earned reputation internationally, to make sure they have the space and time to make the inquiries, collect the evidence and then proceed.