Amesbury Incident

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am very happy to reaffirm that. The statements made yesterday by the chief medical officer and Public Health England were very reassuring; the risk to the public remains low. There is advice from the chief medical officer for those whom I mentioned briefly in my statement—those who believe that they may have been in some of the same areas that are now cordoned off to take some precautionary action. That kind of belt and braces approach is very appropriate, but the risk to the public remains very low.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. Our police, intelligence officers and medical staff are among the best in the world, and I know that they will be doing everything possible to keep people safe and to pursue this vile crime against this couple and the original Skripal attack. Can he confirm that he has had no co-operation from the Russian Government, which would be both revealing and shocking in itself? Will he also say a little bit more about Novichok and whether or how it degrades or deteriorates and how easy it is to detect, as he will be aware that there is already conflicting information and, potentially, misinformation being circulated on this?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. First, I can confirm that we have had no co-operation from the Russian Government, but given their responsibility for the original attack and their campaign of disinformation, no one in the House should be surprised about that. I have made it clear today that, if the Russians wanted to respond in a positive way and provide more information—for example, on Novichok and on how they disposed of the nerve agent, if they did—they could, but they have clearly chosen not to. I have no doubt that, in the coming days and weeks, we will see an increased campaign of disinformation from the Russian state.

The right hon. Lady specifically asks about Novichok and that type of nerve agent. Like all nerve agents, it will deteriorate over some time, but my understanding is that, in the case of this type of nerve agent, that some time could be months and months. Therefore, it is scientifically perfectly possible that this nerve agent came from the same batch; it could well be the exact same nerve agent that was used in March because it would not have had enough time to deteriorate in any meaningful way.

The right hon. Lady also asks about detecting a nerve agent. It is not easy to detect at all. Detection equipment is available for radioactive substances, but detecting a nerve agent is a very different matter and there is no easy way at all to detect it. There are some ways to help find it, but it is hard to detect. That said, the considerable experience that we built up back in March will help us in responding to this incident, too.