Roger Gale
Main Page: Roger Gale (Conservative - North Thanet)Department Debates - View all Roger Gale's debates with the Cabinet Office
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his opening comments and his praise for the police and intelligence agencies. As I have said, there were 250 detectives trawling through 11,000 hours of CCTV and over 1,400 statements; this was a very significant investigation, and there has also of course been the work of the intelligence agencies, which I referred to in my statement as well.
It is not for me to ascribe the motivation of the Russian state in relation to this issue. I suspect it wanted to give a message to Russians living elsewhere who had been involved in matters relating to the Russian state; that is the only reason that I can assume lay behind what it wanted to do. But it is up to the Russians to explain what happened in Salisbury. I have said consistently—I did so in March, we have done so since, and I have said it again this afternoon—that the Russian state needs to explain what happened in Salisbury; all we have had are obfuscation and lies.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
In the light of my right hon. Friend’s statement, does she agree that for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to change its rules at the behest of the secretary general in order to facilitate the readmission of the delegation of the Russian Federation would make an absolute nonsense of the convention on human rights? Does he also agree that it is incumbent on the Council of Europe and all other international bodies to send a clear message to the Russian Federation that human rights are not an à la carte menu?