It’s five years today since the Westminster terror attack. Outside the gates of parliament stands the memorial to PC Keith Palmer, stabbed to death, defending the place where he worked. And the policemen and women at the Palace has clearly been working overtime to prevent a repeat attack from ever occurring again. For Mr S has obtained figures from the parliamentary security services which show that almost 2,000 items have been confiscated from going onto the estate since the beginning of 2019.
The bulk of these are 1,874 so-called ‘legal items’ such as hundreds of pen-knives, padlocks and scissors. These items are returned to the owner upon their departure from the estate; those not collected are taken to lost property, with most likely to cause only limited damage. Knitting needles, water pistols, a dart set, harmonica and novelty toilet roll would probably not have done even that. Other contraband is perhaps concerning in different ways: the ‘opened bottle of vodka’ or the unclaimed bottle of port suggest some staff got lost on their way to No. 10 while the confiscated ‘hippy crack canisters,’ ‘hair glitter spray,’ speaker and glowsticks imply an all together different type of House party. Let’s hope the crystal ball was put to good use predicting ambitious MPs’ futures.
Alongside the legal products were no less than 53 ‘illegal items’ seized by parliamentary staff, all of which meant the subsequent involvement of the Metropolitan police. Mace and pepper spray has been impounded on no less than 11 occasions over the past three years, while Steerpike salutes the audacity of the visitor who tried to smuggle cocaine onto the estate back in October 2019. One perhaps for Lindsay Hoyle’s drugs crackdown to investigate? Most of the contraband though relates to knives with more than 40 types of opinel, kitchen and lock types being confiscated.
Steerpike looks forward to finding out what other gems are unearthed by our boys in blue in 2022.
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