may skripal
I would like to thank the many commenters to this blogsite, whose information and insights have been immensely valuable in putting this piece together.

I'm afraid I don't currently have much faith in the nation's MPs to hold the Government of the day to account on critical issues. This is especially the case with issues where the words "national security" are mentioned. The phrase seems to engender a dangerous sort of Groupthink, whereby it is considered to be unpatriotic and unBritish to scrutinise the actions of the Government and intelligence agencies, even when it is blatantly clear that such scrutiny could in no way constitute a threat to national security.

This is a particularly dangerous tool in the hands of Government, which can avoid having its actions properly scrutinised by simply waving the magic "national security" wand whenever it doesn't want too many questions to be asked. But it is not something that a free people, acquainted with the concepts of the rule of law and liberty should ever accept. Indeed, blind acceptance of it shows us to be halfway down the path to a totalitarian future.

Still, despite the endemic Groupthink that now characterises the chamber on incidents and events relating to "national security", I don't suppose many MPs would take too kindly if they found out that they had been misled in the course of such an issue. And yet earlier this year, this does indeed appear to have happened, as I hope to demonstrate.

On 26th March, the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Theresa May, stood up in the House of Commons to give a statement on "National Security and Russia". You can find the full text here. In the course of that statement, she said the following:
"Mr Speaker, let me start by updating the House on the situation in Salisbury. Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain critically ill in hospital. Sadly, late last week doctors indicated that their condition is unlikely to change in the near future and they may never recover fully. This shows the utterly barbaric nature of this act - and the dangers that hundreds of innocent citizens in Salisbury could have faced."
That sounds fairly straightforward, and MPs cannot have heard it and believed anything other than that the lives of both Sergei and Yulia Skripal were hanging by a thread. Yet when compared with another statement, made by Yulia Skripal herself, one cannot help but see it as wholly inaccurate and deeply misleading.

The statement in question is the one made by Yulia on 23rd May to Reuters. Amongst other things, she said the following:
"I came to the UK on the 3rd of March to visit my father, something I have done regularly in the past. After 20 days in a coma, I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned" [my emphasis].
She makes a very specific, very definite claim about the timeline of events, with no room for ambiguity. She does not say, "After about three weeks" or "a few weeks later" or any other such vaguely worded statement. No, she specifically and categorically names the number of days she was in a coma, before she emerged to hear the news that she had been poisoned. Twenty days. And given that her statement was quite obviously carefully crafted, and most certainly vetted by those responsible for her welfare, we can therefore use it to work out when that was.

If we were to take the first day of her coma as being the day of the poisoning - 4th March - 20 days after that would have been 23rd March. If we were to count from the following day - 5th March - 20 days from then would have been 24th March. And so whether we count from 4th or 5th March, by her own account, Yulia Skripal was awake from her coma, to hear the news that she had been poisoned, on 23rd or 24th March - two or perhaps even three days prior to the Prime Minister's statement to the House of Commons on Monday 26th March.

I anticipate an objection. Wasn't she placed in an induced coma? If so, how do we know when this was and therefore when the 20 days elapsed? There are two answers to this.

Firstly, the induced coma was brought upon Yulia and her father as a result of there being two doctors on duty at the hospital, who had just completed their CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Centre) course at Porton Down. As a recent report in The Telegraph stated:
"Dr Stephen Jukes, intensive care consultant at Salisbury District Hospital, where the Skripals were treated (and where Rowley and Sturgess were taken), has described trying 'all our therapies' to keep Sergei and Yulia alive. Due to an astonishing coincidence, two doctors on duty had just returned from a course at Porton Down, Britain's world-leading equivalent to Shikhany, when the pair were brought in. Recognising what looked like symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning, they made sure to include diazepam and atropine in their battery of treatments - the drugs compensate for some of the effects of acetylcholinesterase blockage - and plunged the Skripals into an artificial coma to prevent brain damage."
In other words, these doctors put the Skripals into an induced coma, not because nerve agent poisoning had been shown by tests to have taken place, but rather to prevent brain damage.

When was this? According to a number of reports, including this one, the two doctors were present at the hospital on the afternoon of 4th March, and in point of fact their presence is said to have been crucial in the saving of the lives of Mr Skripal and his daughter. Therefore, even allowing for benefit of the doubt to say that it took several hours before they induced the coma, we can say with confidence that it must have taken place either on the evening of 4th March, or in the early hours of 5th March - certainly no later than 5th March - indicating that Yulia woke on either 23rd or 24th March.

The second answer is very interesting. As one of the commenters on this blog, Paul, has pointed out, someone in an induced coma does not "wake up" from it in the sense that someone might normally awaken from a coma; rather, what happens is doctors reduce the drugs over a period of days until the person is no longer receiving enough medication to stay in the coma. Which presumably means that at some point before 23rd or 24th March, doctors at Salisbury District Hospital were acting to take Yulia out of the induced coma.

What we therefore have is the following timeline, and you will see that I have included one other event of interest - the judgement at the High Court on 22nd March:
4th March
Sergei and Yulia Skripal are taken to Salisbury District Hospital with suspected opioid poisoning.

4th March or early on 5th March
The two of them are put into an induced coma to prevent brain damage.

22nd March
Mr Justice Williams at the High Court produces a ruling granting authority for blood samples to be taken from both Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as they were both unconscious, for examination by the OPCW.

23rd or 24th March
According to Yulia Skripal's account, she "awakes" from her induced coma, and hears that she has been poisoned. This means that doctors must have been preparing to take her out of the induced coma prior to this.

26th March
Theresa May tells the House of Commons that: "Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain critically ill in hospital. Sadly, late last week doctors indicated that their condition is unlikely to change in the near future and they may never recover fully."
Do you see it? Do you see that Mrs May's statement is utterly incompatible with Yulia Skripal's statement? Do you see that when the Prime Minister made her statement, Yulia Skripal's condition had already changed, so much so that she was no longer in a coma and she was indeed back on her way to health? Was it not therefore misleading to state before the House that she remained critically ill, that her condition was unlikely to change, and that she might never fully recover?

There is no getout clause whereby someone can say that the correct information had not been passed on to the Prime Minister. No, unless Yulia Skripal is completely mistaken, then she must have come out of the coma on 23rd or 24th March. This was a good two or possibly three days before the Prime Minister went before the House on the evening of Monday 26th March. Yet Mrs May does not mention that Yulia has emerged from the coma and that her condition has improved. In fact, what she states implies quite the opposite. Why?

Given the exactness of her words - 20 days - and the fact that her statement would have been scrutinised by her handlers, it is highly unlikely that Yulia Skripal's statement is wrong. She must know the day and the date that she regained consciousness. If she was wrong, then we need to hear from her, in a proper interview, where questions are allowed, in order that she can set the record straight.

In the absence of this, I'm afraid I can see only two possibilities:
  1. Mrs May knowingly read out a misleading statement to the House.
  2. Mrs May unwittingly read out a misleading statement to the House, having been misled by others.
Whichever of these explanations is the case, I really have no idea or no opinion. But either way it seems to me extremely serious and requires an explanation.

And so here's a question for every Member of Parliament out there. You are paid to represent your constituents, and part of your job involves holding the Government of the day to account. Perhaps there's an innocent explanation in all this. But are any of you prepared to do your job and ask the Prime Minister why she appears to have read out an inaccurate and deeply misleading statement to the House of Commons on 26th March?

PostScript

For those who need any further convincing that Mrs May's statement was misleading, I am again indebted to Paul for pointing out some interesting details from BBC's Newsnight special report on the case, hosted by Mark Urban, the BBC's Diplomatic and Defence Editor (and friend of Sergei Skripal's handler, Pablo Miller).

Here is a transcript from the relevant part of the programme, which takes place from 8:15-9:35 (you can see the whole thing here).
Mark Urban: "After a couple of weeks, there were gradual but distinct signs of progress. The exact timing of that, and details of the drugs given remain matters of medical confidentiality."

Dr. Stephen Jukes (Intensive Care Consultant): "When we began seeing some improvements, it happened a lot quicker than it was anticipated. Certainly, when you look at this group of nerve agents, the expectation from the text books, the journals suggested a much longer period of recovery."

Dr. Christine Blanshard (Medical Director): "I remember the first time I heard from the intensive care consultant on duty that week, that the patients were showing signs of recovery, I switched from trying to think, which - you know as the medical director of the Trust, I will always be thinking in best case and worst case scenario, what will happen in they die, what will happen if they recover, to suddenly thinking, 'Oh, maybe it's less of A and more of B', and that was a real turning point to me."

Dr. Stephen Jukes: "I think we'd all agree that we were exceptionally surprised, pleasantly surprised to see the recovery happen, and at such a pace, when it did begin to happen. That, I can't easily explain."
What this shows is as follows:
  1. Improvements in the state of the Skripals were seen after two weeks, which would be sometime around the beginning of the week commencing Sunday 18th March.
  2. Once those initial improvements were seen, progress was then seen quite quickly.
  3. That these initial signs of recovery were reported to the Medical Director of the Trust, who describes them as a turning point.
Which leads to some interesting questions. Firstly, why did Theresa May apparently not know, or care to pass on to Parliament (whichever) what both Stephen Jukes and Christine Blanshard knew long before her statement - that the Skripals were recovering, and that they were recovering much faster than expected?

But just as important, let's open another can of worms. In the High Court judgement of 22nd March, in section 5, we read the following:
"The application came before me on 20 March 2018. It was made on an urgent basis. The OPCW wished to collect samples in the near future. The evidence is that samples taken from living individuals are of more scientific value than post mortem samples. At present both Mr and Ms Skripal are critical but stable; it is not inconceivable that their condition could rapidly deteriorate. I heard submissions from the Secretary of State and from the Official Solicitor who was to be appointed the Litigation Friend of both Mr and Ms Skripal. The NHS Trust were neither present nor represented although they are a Respondent to each application. I was told that the NHS Trust were aware of the application and the evidence I have read from the lead treating clinician is that they do not feel comfortable going beyond their clinical role. In effect the NHS Trust are therefore neutral on this application although they have confirmed that they will implement or facilitate any order that I make. At the conclusion of the hearing I gave my decision and short reasons and now I set out that decision and reasoning more fully" [my emphasis].
Two questions arising from this:
  1. Why was the High Court judgement necessary and so urgent, given that both the Intensive Care Consultant and the Medical Director were well aware by that time that the Skripals were recovering, and fast?
  2. Could the fact that they knew that the Skripals recovery was well underway, and yet the Government apparently needed a High Court judgement to take blood samples because they might die, be why the NHS Trust were not (refused to be?) present or represented at the hearing by any chance?