Salisbury Incident

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can certainly assure the noble Lord that we adopt a rigorous approach to border security. Agencies work together at the border to manage a range of threats, including those posed by terrorism and serious and organised crime. The Border Force has a range of capabilities to detect, target and identify substances and materials that could cause harm. This includes Cyclamen, a joint Home Office and UK Border Force counterterrorism initiative to detect and intercept the illicit importation of radiological and nuclear material into the UK.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, does not the use of Novichok in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, which is reminiscent of the use of the VX nerve agent, used to assassinate Kim Jong-nam in Kuala Lumpur Airport, and the use of chemical weapons in the conflict in Syria, remind us that chemical and biological weapons are not a throwback to the Cold War? Should we not therefore be giving consideration now to the re-establishment of the Army’s disbanded chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear regiment?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to highlight the seriousness of the situation facing us. We obviously comply fully with all our obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and we will be working very closely with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to ensure that we try to prevent this happening again.