Clause 2 - Health functions
Health Protection Agency Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mr Patrick Mercer (Shadow Minister (Homeland Security), Home, Constitutional & Legal Affairs; Newark, Conservative)
I listened to the Minister during our debate on the amendments, and many of her points addressed the difficulties that we raised. However, I am still unconvinced that the Government fully understand the integration between the Health Protection Agency and the more conventional agencies that are flourishing as part of the homeland security agenda. It seriously worries me that the sort of attacks that there have been in the past will change and, according to reliable intelligence, enemy agents will start to use a completely different style of attack, which may not be as obvious as an explosive or contact poison attack. For example, it will be something like smallpox, which may take weeks or months to develop, and could be absolutely devastating to the population. It could also be very difficult to assess whether such an attack arose from a natural cause or was the result of action by terrorists. That is why I found the Government's earlier efforts to warn the population in advance about what is going on slightly disingenuous.
An interesting leak appeared about a month or so ago in The Sunday Times, which published in draft form the Government's forthcoming document, which we believe that they intend to send to every household. Much of the advice in that pamphlet was extremely useful and helpful; I have no doubt that there are holes in it, as there are in any such work, which cannot be perfect. However, I do not criticise it for that. If that newspaper report was correct and that is the course of action that the Government are following, it was clear that the Health Protection Agency had not been a large contributor to the document. My point is therefore simple: I believe that our enemies will increasingly use asymmetric, imaginative and technical styles of attack, and we may not even know whether we have been attacked by terrorists or not. That is the bailiwick of the Health Protection Agency. I absolutely take the Minister's point about clause 4.