§ Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about the handling by the police of the radioactive material deposited in Whitehall on Saturday 12 November; what was the radioactive level of the material; where it was taken for analysis; and what precautions were used by the persons dealing with the material.
§ Mr. HurdThe Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis tells me that on 12 November some people taking part in a demonstration emptied a dustbin of mud at the junction of Whitehall and Richmond terrace and claimed that it was highly radioactive. The police cordoned off the area and called for assistance from the chemical incident unit of the London fire brigade. As the unit was arriving, the police learnt that the demonstrators had brought the material with them some distance by train. The inference was that they would have been most unlikely to have exposed themselves to dangerous material. The police took the material in a plastic bag to Westminster hospital, and confirmed that it was not dangerous. Arrangements are being made to test the precise level of radioactivity of the material.