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)
I am grateful to my hon. and, indeed, gallant Friend for his intervention. Clearly, as a medical officer, his understanding of such issues is much greater than mine. I suspect that he has probably been peeping at my notes; half the problem with such weapons is that they will perpetrate panic, hysteria and difficulties out of all proportion to the effects of the weapon themselves.
Let us look at what might be used and at what has been used in the recent past. We have seen, for instance, the use of a non-persistent chemical, sarin, on the underground in Japan. We are conscious of the fact that sarin was one of the weapons in the armoury of al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam and other such groups. There is every possibility of non-persistent and persistent agents being used against the west.
Similarly, we need to start to think about the effects of radiation sickness. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) has just pointed out, any form of radiological device is likely to have effects far in excess of an initial explosion or the contamination that it spreads. Let us move from there on to a biological attack. What does the Minister believe is the possibility of smallpox being used as a weapon? [Interruption.] I see Government Members sneering, but the fact remains that smallpox is a deeply lethal disease that can be easily deployed and has the added
benefit, from a terrorist's point of view, of the physical symptoms taking an extraordinarily long time to develop.
The problem about warning people, training them and making sure that they are aware of what is coming is that all such things are weapons of Armageddon. They all carry a degree of terror with them that is probably out of proportion to the casualties that they will actually inflict. The whole point of the amendment is to make it clear that the population need to be educated in such a way that they will understand what the threat is, will be able to react once the threat physically develops and will be taught by the Government what to do without spreading or engendering panic, which should be totally unnecessary.
It is interesting that in the past, in areas where there has been a threat of an accident with a nuclear submarine, iodine tablets have been distributed to the civilian population at large. I would be interested to know how, when the responsibilities of the National Radiological Protection Board switch to the Health Protection Agency—