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Biological Weapons

Volume 485: debated on Monday 15 December 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what resources and procedures his Department has in place to respond to (a) a biological terrorist attack, (b) a chemical terrorist attack and (c) a nuclear or radiological terrorist attack. (241778)

The MOD makes a number of specialist capabilities available to the civil authorities for dealing with CBRN terrorism. These include mitigation advice, specialist search, explosive ordinance disposal, detection, sampling and identification, and decontamination, as well as access to world leading research and development in this field through the Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). Some of these capabilities are held at high readiness and routinely exercise and operate with police forces.