Salisbury Incident Update

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank my noble friend, and I entirely agree. Indeed, the action that we have taken on sanctions, for instance, has presented a clear united western position to Russia. We will be discussing this with our allies and working out what action needs to be taken, both in the UK and internationally.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, when I did a review two years ago into London’s preparedness for a major terrorist incident, I was informed that the number of emergency service staff, particularly in the ambulance service, trained and equipped to deal with CBRN incidents had reduced substantially in recent years, partly because of a change in the assessment of the intelligence of the risk of such an attack but also because of new ways of dealing with such incidents. Are the Government satisfied with the number of staff who are equipped with the appropriate suits to deal with such incidents in the event of something occurring in future?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Once again, I pay tribute to all those involved. We believe that there are resources. Obviously, we have pulled in experts from all different areas and different parts of the emergency services, and we feel that we are managing to respond to this adequately. However, we will also always be mindful and learn lessons from this going forward.