Drones: Consultation Response

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Most immediately, the security at the airport is the responsibility of the owners themselves, supported by my Department and by the national security agencies. Those discussions are already happening—they were happening within a matter of hours of the incident at Gatwick. I can assure the House that every airport is now taking active steps to look at what measures it can put in place, but the reality is that these are experimental systems and are not universally available yet. It will take a bit of time for other airports to get them in place. In the meantime, the Ministry of Defence capability is there if necessary.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I urge the Secretary of State to look at the reports by the BBC’s Quentin Somerville who shows how drone attacks, using commercially available drones, have been using chemicals and explosive devices on the battlefields of Mosul. In many respects, we were fortunate—darn lucky—in that we had a wake-up call at Gatwick. May I suggest that the Secretary of State talks not only to the MOD but to NATO, where there is huge expertise about the use on the battlefield of drones, which can be bought commercially and used here by terrorists who want to attack us?

[Chris Grayling]

I can assure the hon. Lady that we are very well aware of that and, indeed, the security services have been providing advice to airports about this for some considerable time. They have provided advice specifically based on some of those experiences in the middle east, and this is something on which we work with them continuously.