Clause 2 - Health functions
Health Protection Agency Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Mr Patrick Mercer (Shadow Minister (Homeland Security), Home, Constitutional & Legal Affairs; Newark, Conservative)
May I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Forth? We had an interesting debate this morning, but I was just in mid flow when the clock hand turned to the appropriate hour for lunch.
If I may iterate, the great difficulty that we face is that since 11 September 2001—a convenient date to choose—our enemies have without doubt made lots of potentially lethal attempts to attack these islands. It is only by good luck and the extraordinary professionalism of our security services and police forces that those attacks have so far been avoided.
The fact remains that most people probably expect the sort of attack that we narrowly avoided about four weeks ago in west London, when the security services intercepted 150 lb of fertiliser. I do not know, but I suspect that that material would otherwise have been used for a series of conventional blasts that could have wrought all sorts of damage—probably something similar to the Madrid attacks or even worse.
When the vexing phrase ''weapons of mass destruction'' comes up, it is worth reflecting that there was an attempt to use such weapons against these islands in the not-too-distant past. That fact is particularly relevant to amendment No. 4. In January 2003, an organisation called Ansar al-Islam attempted to use a contact poison in north London known as ricin. Had that poison been successfully deployed, it could have caused hundreds or even thousands of casualties.
It is useful to bear that incident in mind. That plan was pretty crude, but had it worked, we would be looking at the work of the security services and the Health Protection Agency in a wholly different way. Amendment No. 4 is relevant to that, as it would add the words ''including education and promotion'' to
subsection (1)(b), which makes provision for functions relating to
''the prevention of the spread of infectious disease''.
I would like to tease from the Minister some idea of how she believes we can cover such crucial matters as education and promotion without spelling them out in any more detail than the Bill already provides for.
What am I talking about? Currently, a number of different threats are explained to the population. For instance, we heard earlier about obesity, about which there is an informative campaign. However, I do not think that anyone could say, ''My God, the Government are being thoroughly irresponsible in the way that they are talking about obesity,'' or about the danger to children on the roads, for instance. However, the Government must feel that they are in a difficult position if we are to try to get across to the public at large the dangers, difficulties and lethality of the sort of weapons that might be used against this country. Clearly, chemical, biological, radiological or, in the worst event, nuclear weapons are likely to cause mass casualties. The worst possible thing to do would be to allow our population to remain ignorant of the effects of that style of attack and the diseases that it may engender.