Andrew Rosindell – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2015-11-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she has taken and plans to take to ensure that out of city areas are adequately defended and protected from a repetition of the recent attacks in Paris.

Mr John Hayes

Since the attacks in Mumbai in 2008 the Home Office has worked with the Department for Communities and Local Government, Department of Health and the police and security and intelligence agencies to develop a strong, police-led capability to deal with large-scale firearms attacks in the UK. We have also improved joint working between the emergency services to deal with the particular challenges of this type of incident so that specialist joint police, ambulance and fire teams are now in place in key areas across England (including London), with equivalents in Scotland and Wales. Firearms police are trained to respond to a marauding firearms attack and fire and ambulance teams are trained and equipped to manage casualties in higher risk environments. Under the Spending Review, the Government has also committed to protecting police spending in real terms and to further strengthen police firearms resource to protect citizens from terrorism. New funding is also available to the security and intelligence agencies to provide for an additional 1,900 officers to better respond to the threat we face from international terrorism, cyber-attacks and other global risks.

We are reviewing our response to firearms attacks of the type seen in Paris, to see if there is anything we can learn.