Salisbury Update

Ross Thomson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The Government worked with the local authority and others in the Salisbury and Wiltshire area more generally to ensure that support was in place to help those communities through the disruption and difficulties they had as a result of these incidents. I was very pleased to visit Salisbury shortly after the attack. As I said, the then Home Secretary made two visits to Salisbury, and others have also visited. I want people to go to Salisbury, and I want people to enjoy Salisbury as a city and Wiltshire as a great part of the UK to visit.

I have thanked the police and security services, and I would like to thank the local authority and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) for their work.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for her statement. She referred to Russia’s response of extraordinary obfuscation and lies. Will she update the House on the actions she will be taking to counter propaganda and the dissemination of disinformation from Russia?

[The Prime Minister]

I hope that my hon. Friend will take the reassurance that we will be acting on this. I cannot go into detail on everything we will be doing, but we will be ensuring that we bring the full panoply of the national security apparatus to deal with the issues we face in terms of this malign state activity.