Salisbury Incident Update

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement and I join her and, I am sure, the whole House, in paying tribute to the dedication and bravery of our emergency services and Armed Forces who are responding to this incident. Our thoughts remain with Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey and his family at a stressful and worrying time for them, and we wish him a full recovery. This is a deeply shocking attack which we agree was reckless in its disregard for the lives of UK citizens, as well as a direct attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. We commend members of the public in Salisbury who have assisted the investigation. We have to understand the emotional impact on the residents of Salisbury.

The noble Baroness is right that this investigation must be led by evidence, not by speculation. However, she has now been clear about the facts known so far and the evidence that links this attack to Russia, whether government or rogue. I am grateful for the details of the Government’s follow-up engagement with the Russian embassy in the UK, and I welcome the Minister’s agreement to update Parliament on the Russian ambassador’s response as a matter of urgency after he has responded by tomorrow evening. Can she give the House an assurance that this will be discussed in Cabinet and that the response will be formulated before it is brought to your Lordships’ House? We welcome the assurance that a full range of measures will be brought to your Lordships’ House.

The implications of this attack are international and national but they are also very local. Are the Government confident that members of the public have been given all the information they need to cope with this incident in a timely manner? Have all the relevant authorities responded quickly enough in offering help and advice to people in the area? Following the incident, the Chief Medical Officer told the community in Salisbury that there was a low risk to the public. It was not until a week after the attack, on Sunday 11 March, that possibly affected members of the public were told that, although the risk remained low, there were actions they should take for their own safety. They include washing clothes as normal in a washing machine. However, clothes that cannot be washed are apparently safe to handle but must be covered and sealed inside two plastic bags and safely stored. For other personal items, such as mobile phones, the instructions say that a wipe down with a baby wipe is adequate. At the moment at which reassurance is needed, the information that is reaching the public has been delayed and, at times, contradictory. We are told that staff working in the Zizzi restaurant on the date of the attack were told to destroy any clothes they were wearing and visit their doctor for a health check. Can the noble Baroness tell the House when staff were informed that that should be their course of action? Why were they told to do that when members of the public in the same restaurant and bar were not told at the same time? We also know that the table at which Mr Skripal and his daughter ate has been destroyed. Are the investigators aware of whether any other members of the public sat at the table in the hours immediately afterwards? If so, have they been identified and contacted?

The Public Health England guidance for those who visited either the restaurant or The Mill pub states:

“You do not need to seek advice from a health professional unless you are experiencing symptoms”,


but it does not give any information on the symptoms to look out for. Would they be respiratory symptoms or a skin rash? A little more information might be helpful for members of the public who are concerned and do not know whether they have symptoms.

The former Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has today said there has been quite a long delay, and his experience led him to state that health chiefs should have set up an emergency health centre and a helpline. The public are entitled to more open, specific information rather than general reassurances. Although the risk remains low, members of the public need to be confident that they have all the information they need and know exactly what they are required to do to be safe. Do the Government have any plans to set up a public helpline as the investigation continues?

The former commander of the Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment—the CBRN regiment—which specialised in detecting chemical weapons, has said that it is important to be more open about what the city is facing. Taking a step back and looking further into the future regarding our response to this deeply disturbing attack, he has also raised the point that the CBRN regiment was disbanded in 2011 as part of a cost-cutting defence review. Will the noble Baroness consider whether that decision should be revisited? Can she update the House on what plans the Government have to ensure our Armed Forces are properly resourced and prepared for such attacks?

It is important that the emergency services work together and are fully briefed, trained and equipped. The fire and rescue service is responsible for decontamination. When was the guidance for dealing with CBRN last updated? I could not find anything on the government website since 2012, and issues have changed since then. Can the noble Baroness say whether the funding has kept pace with the threat, and whether it has increased or decreased since 2010? I am happy for her to write to me on those points.

Finally, the sanctions Bill that passed through your Lordships’ House with some amendments is now in the House of Commons, which has the opportunity to support the amendments on the Magnitsky clause. It targets sanctions against individuals who abuse human rights. Will the Government reconsider their opposition to that clause as it may well be appropriate when we are dealing with issues such as these?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, in echoing the views of the Prime Minister about the bravery of the emergency services. Like her, our thoughts are also with Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, and we wish him a speedy recovery.

Although the emergency services are well rehearsed in dealing with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, that is primarily aimed at dealing with terrorist attacks, such as happened on the Tube. This is a very different sort of case and I wonder whether the Government will now consider giving revised guidance to first responders who might find themselves, out of the blue, dealing with a case like this, which at first sight is not necessarily a terrorist attack. In this case the effect on the first responder has clearly been very significant.

The Prime Minister says that there are hundreds of detectives working on the case. Given that police numbers are at their lowest for 30 years, could the Minister explain where these hundreds of detectives have come from? Are she and the Government satisfied that in drawing hundreds of detectives from elsewhere, they have not left unacceptable gaps in those parts from which they have come? When my noble friend Lord Paddick, commenting on this incident last week, asked the Home Office Minister about police resourcing, he was told that the police had the numbers “and more” to do the job they have to do. This flies in the face of the National Police Chiefs Council statement in December that the Budget settlement,

“does not fully meet the level of investment that we identified as necessary”.

I know there is not long to go, but can the Minister have a word with her friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and suggest that, when he makes his Statement this week, he reassures the House and the country that he is making available the level of resource required for the police numbers to be there to do the job they are absolutely required to do.

The Statement explains the steps that were taken after Mr Litvinenko’s death to prevent repetition of such an event. It is very tempting to say simply that they have not been very effective in this case. What is slightly more worrying, however, is that there have been suggestions from US intelligence sources and elsewhere that the UK Government have not been particularly rigorous in implementing those measures because of the levels of investment by Russians in London and elsewhere. I hope the Leader of the House can reassure me that that is not the case.

The Statement goes on to talk about international collaboration against Russian expansionism and unsatisfactory behaviour of various sorts via NATO. Yet the kind of sanctions that we are talking about here are nothing to do with NATO. We are not talking about putting up tanks against the Russian border; we are talking about targeted sanctions against individuals and companies. The way we co-ordinate that is through the EU. That is what we have been discussing with the recent Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill: how on earth we manage to have proper co-ordination going forward. It is rather typical of the attitude of this Government that they talk about NATO, which is almost entirely irrelevant to this incident, but fail to mention at all the EU, which is absolutely germane if we are to get a co-ordinated European response.

The Government say that we must now stand ready to take more extensive measures. I am sure they will have the support of the whole House if they come forward with credible measures to respond to this outrage and potential future threats. But we will be looking very carefully to ensure that any such measures are properly resourced and carried forward with a degree of energy and commitment that has not always and obviously been the case in the past.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their comments. The noble Baroness, rightly, raised the important issue of public safety. I can reassure her that all those who have been in contact with the patients have been contacted by Public Health England, and questions asked about their health status. The latest information was received only on Saturday, and a website was prepared to give the public access to all the relevant information. An announcement was then made early on Sunday. The CMO was confident that nobody who was in the pub or restaurant has come to any immediate harm, and the advice on Sunday does not indicate a change to the existing advice that the risk of harm to the general public is low. However, following new evidence of traces of the substance at the restaurant and pub, and as part of the continuous risk assessment, it was decided to issue additional, highly precautionary advice to a small number of people whose clothes or possessions may have residual traces of the substance, to eliminate future risk.

I will take back the noble Baroness’s suggestion about a helpline, as I do not have an answer on that. I will also write to her in response to her questions about CBRN, as I do not have that information to hand. On defence, I can certainly say that, through the Modernising Defence programme, the Ministry of Defence is assessing the threats to UK security and prosperity, including increasing Russian hostility to the West, and ensuring that our Armed Forces have the right capabilities to deter and respond to these threats.

The noble Baroness also asked about Magnitsky. We already have a range of powers, similar to those in the US Magnitsky Act, which we regularly deploy to protect national security and our financial system. As the Prime Minister herself said in the other place, conversations will continue to see whether there is any further need for legislation.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about front-line responders. I can assure him that the Home Office, working with ether government departments, the devolved Administrations and the emergency services, has co-ordinated the delivery of training to more than 150,000 front-line responders. He also asked about resources. More than 250 counterterrorism police from eight of our 11 counterterror units are now working on this incident. We have the best expertise available in this very difficult situation.

I can also assure the noble Lord that we recognise that some of the factors which make the UK attractive for legitimate business also expose us to the risk of illicit financial flows. Recognising these risks, we have taken a leading role in the global fight against illicit finance. We have robust legal and regulatory frameworks that enable effective investigation and prosecution of money laundering and the recovery of illicit assets. Indeed, this Government have recovered more criminal assets than ever before: £1.4 billion was taken from offenders between April 2010 and March 2017, with many hundreds of millions more frozen.