Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)

My Lords, I have an amendment that I put in this group because it should go with the amendment introduced so eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. On 4 March, the Minister was asked whether a new full planning permission application would go back to Westminster City Council. He replied that “that is in the hands of the designated Minister”,—[Official Report, 4/3/25; col. GC 92.] so I hold out no great hope for revised planning permission. My amendment relates to safety. I was pleased to be able to be heard by the Select Committee. I draw attention to its report, which stated that the promoter has undertaken to “make representations to the Secretary of State in relation to security considerations” and “consult with the Corporate Officer of the House of Commons and the Corporate Officer of the House of Lords, Community Security Trust, the Metropolitan Police, the National Protective Security Authority and Westminster City Council”. There is no mention of the London Fire Brigade, yet here we have a proposal for an underground learning centre with a single entrance. I had quite a lot of difficulty, so I am grateful to those who managed to let me see some floor plans of this proposed education centre. I was becoming increasingly concerned about the security and fire risks—and the gas risk, which links to fire—that could be incurred in an underground centre. I notice that there are several staircases, which all come up into a communal area, and so-called fire escape routes. I then looked at disasters that have happened underground. We all remember the King’s Cross fire, in which there were 31 fatalities. One of the findings was that there was a flashover—the trench effect where a tongue of fire comes up into a central area so fast that nobody can escape. Here we are talking about people being trapped underground. In that fire, there were alternative routes that a lot of people escaped through—although one was blocked by a locked door, which aggravated the disaster. The other thing is that, if you use water fog equipment, people have to be trained in its use. Has there been consideration of whether the paint and surfaces used in this underground space will be fire resistant? I also looked at what happened in the Moscow theatre siege. People were held in an enclosed space and fentanyl gas was used, which rendered them unconscious very quickly. One problem was that it suppressed respiration in many of the unconscious people and there was not adequate naloxone available to reverse the effect. I can envisage someone going in with a canister of something like fentanyl gas in a plastic container and releasing it. I hope noble Lords will excuse me if they do not like the language, but we know that people hide things in body cavities; it would not be difficult to hide 10 to 20 mil of some compressed gas in either the rectum or vagina and go underground. My other concern, which relates to that, came from the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo underground, where it was evident that people had to get to the victims rapidly but there was no advanced airway support available, hence the mortality rate went up.