CCTV Plan for Parliament

A CCTV plan for Parliament has been delayed due to heritage concerns.

13:12 05 September 2017

he Commons and Lords Speakers have signed off on the plan for the installation of security cameras in all areas of Parliament. However, the move has been delayed for months because of concerns that the devices might be unsightly.

 

The news come after the results of a secret “resilience test” showed that terrorists could break into Parliament in under five minutes and stage a massacre of more than 100 MPs.

 

Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, together with Valerie Vaz, her Labour counterpart, and Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons deputy speaker, is expected to write to MPs urging them to dial a security hotline if they see anything of concern.

                               

The decision to place CCTV in the Palace of Westminster was first taken months before jihadist Khalid Masood managed to enter the parliamentary estate through an open gate after running over pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. False reports that he had an accomplice on the loose on the estate then quickly surfaced. This raised the question on the security officials’ ability to track down potential intruders once they have managed to gain access.

 

"The purpose was to allow security to, broadly speaking, work out where somebody has gone, so they can at least follow them down the corridor," a senior source said.