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Porton Down laboratory to get £48m boost after Skripal attack
[Financial Times] UK defence secretary Gavin Williamson will on Thursday pledge an additional £48m for Britain’s defence science and technology laboratory at Porton Down, in the wake of the poisoning of a former Russian spy with a weapons grade nerve agent.The laboratory was instrumental in identifying Russia as the source of the nerve agent used to target Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia 10 days ago in Salisbury. The pair remain in a critical condition in hospital. Scientists from Porton Down have also been at the centre of the clean-up operation in Salisbury following the attack, which has prompted one of the biggest crises in UK-Russian relations since the end of the cold war. Mr Williamson will use a speech to Policy Exchange, a think-tank, to make the case for increased defence spending to meet the growing threat from Russia and other hostile state actors. The Ministry of Defence is facing a £20bn shortfall in funding over the next 10 years. “In the face of intensifying threats, we must prioritise investment in military capabilities,” he will say. “We cannot sit back and let events overtake us.” The attack in Salisbury has raised questions about whether the government should invest more in its programme to deal with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. A specialist regiment focused on this area was disbanded in 2011 following deep defence cuts ordered by David Cameron’s coalition government — a move that may be reversed as part of a defence review led by Mr Williamson and due to be completed in the summer. Senior Whitehall officials have conceded that “inadequate attention” has been paid to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats in discussions about the review so far. Mr Williamson will point to the attack in Salisbury as an example of the new threat faced by Britain and its allies. “If we doubted the threat Russia poses to our citizens, we only have to look at the shocking example of their reckless attack in Salisbury,” he will say. “We know the chemical threat doesn’t just come from Russia but from others.” Garth Whitty, a former British army specialist in the disposal of chemical weapons, said the Salisbury incident highlighted how unprepared the UK was for such an attack. He added that the UK’s biological and chemical warfare capabilities had inevitably fallen victim to budget cuts in recent years. Mr Whitty, who served as a United Nations chemical weapons inspector in Iraq in the early 1990s, said that once it had become clear the Salisbury attack involved a nerve agent, a detailed response should have been followed to “identify . . . contain, detect and decontaminate”. “This fundamental requirement to minimise contamination, the number of potential victims and potential terror/hysteria management was not followed,” he added. But he also acknowledged a chemical weapon attack on the streets of the UK would have come some way down the UK’s list of probable threats. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-03-19 |
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