Shabana Mahmood

Shabana Mahmood

Labour — Birmingham Ladywood

Speaking in the House of Commons on 13 October 2025

Debate

Manchester Terrorism Attack

Contribution

When I visited soon after the attack, I was very clear that the main findings from the arena attack related to the ability of the emergency services to respond in a timely way and therefore save lives. I can tell my hon. Friend that between them, the emergency services—the fire service, the police, the ambulance service and everybody else—took on board the direct learnings from what happened in the arena attack. Only seven minutes passed between moment the first call came in and the moment the attacker was shot dead, so I pay direct tribute to all those emergency services. A role was played not just by armed police, but by the ambulance service and the fire service—fire services happened to be going to a different fire, but they re-routed to deal with the aftermath of the attack. I pay tribute to them. Those are direct learnings from the arena attack. On the wider picture, we will know more about the preparation and planning of the attack once all the facts are in. I will inform my hon. Friend and others in the House if I think there are wider lessons to be drawn, but it is a little early in the investigation to say whether there are.

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