People were not warned against picking up discarded objects after the 2018 novichok attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal despite concerns that a container of the nerve agent had been left in Salisbury, a senior counter-terrorism police chief has said.
Commander Dominic Murphy told an inquiry that he believed no warning was issued by public health leaders until after the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess three months later when she sprayed herself with a dose of nerve agent from a fake perfume bottle apparently found in a bin in the city.
Murphy’s testimony appears to contradict that of the former chief medical officer for England and Wales, Dame Sally Davies, who said last week she had a “strong recollection” of a warning being made soon after the attack on Skripal in March 2018, though no record of one can be found.
Murphy, who is head of the Met police’s counter-terrorism command, said the priorities for police after the attack on Skripal were to find the point of contamination and trace any novichok discarded in Salisbury.
He said: “We were concerned about discarded novichok. I don’t recall any advice about not picking up coming out at that point.”
A search for a discarded nerve agent container took place around Skripal’s neighbourhood after police identified his front door handle as “ground zero” – the point where he and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned – but ended in the middle of April.
Murphy was asked by the barrister Jesse Nicholls, representing the Sturgess family: “You had searched for it; you hadn’t found it. Does it follow there was an ongoing risk?” Murphy replied: “Yes, there was an ongoing risk.”
Nicholls asked: “When the searches stopped, did the investigation consider saying to Public Health England [PHE] and the chief medical officer [CMO]: ‘We have been searching for novichok because we think there may have been a discarded container. We have done all of the proportionate and reasonable searches we think are appropriate and we haven’t found it so there is an ongoing risk it’s out there’?”
Murphy said: “That’s not a conversation I ever recall having with PHE, not in those explicit terms.” He said he had not had that conversation with the CMO either.
After Sturgess and her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, were poisoned at the end of June, Davies made a public statement warning people not to pick objects up. She said: “I should also warn that the public should be careful, as always, of picking up any unknown or already dangerous objects such as needles and syringes.”
Murphy said: “That is, I believe, the first time the ‘don’t pick up’ advice was issued.”
Prof John Aston, who was the Home Office’s chief scientific adviser at the time, said telling people not to pick up objects after the attack on Skripal could have caused panic.
Nicholls suggested it was “imperative” that the public was told in March not to pick up a container.
Aston said: “In public health there is always a balance. There are risks in saying things. There are risks in not saying things. There is a risk of causing panic.”
The barrister said Sturgess’s death showed the risk in not issuing the advice. Aston replied: “I think that is a very big jump,” but he accepted there was no “mass panic” after the advice not to pick up objects was eventually issued following Sturgess’s poisoning.
The inquiry saw a record of a PHE meeting that took place in the early days of the investigation, which seems to show that the idea of making a warning was in the mind of health officials.
The minute, from 9 March 2018 – five days after the attack – reads: “What we are moving towards is to relay messages to the public around not picking up any unidentified containers.”
The inquiry continues.
