HORDES of people infected with smallpox fleeing a city targeted by terrorists and infecting people across the country--that was the doomsday picture painted by Tonbridge and Malling MP Sir John Stanley in parliament this week.

The former Armed Forces Minister told a debate on civil defence: "There is no doubt in my mind that if such an attack took place, people would do everything possible to break out of the so-called quarantine cordons that the Government intend to erect, surrounded by police and armed servicemen apparently equipped with baton rounds.

"There will be infected people among those who escape, and the infection will spread to all parts of the United Kingdom.

"Against that background, it is incumbent on the Government to consider very seriously the possibility of enabling the people of this country to have smallpox vaccinations on a voluntary basis."

Sir John, a member of the foreign affairs select committee, questioned the chief medical officer's view that waiting until a smallpox attack happened and then vaccinating selectively would suffice.

He said: "The most urgent medical policy issue is protection of the public against a smallpox attack. It is of the utmost urgency for evident reasons.

"It is the area where there is the greatest potential to save life because a vaccine is available.

"In the United States recently, I received a confidential briefing on its worst-case scenario of a smallpox attack in the United States. The results were horrific.

"Every person infected with smallpox is likely to infect a further 10. Smallpox will spread like wildfire, and, as we know, its consequences are normally fatal unless vaccination can be provided."

The disease kills up to a third of all the people it infects in two weeks and blinds and maims many more.

Sir John added: "In the United States and in France, the governments have already announced that they will procure sufficient smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the entire population.

"In the UK, the Government treat as confidential how much vaccine is being procured for reasons that I wholly fail to understand or conceive to be justified.

"The Government have indicated that the amount of vaccine being procured is less than one per head of population in the UK, which is an extraordinary decision given that in the event of a smallpox attack people are likely to disperse and carry the infection with them.

"I see no security reason why information should not be disclosed. It is information that the public, whose lives are at risk, are entitled to have."

He added that the Prime Minister should let people know if he had taken the vaccine to ensure surviving a smallpox attack.

He said: "He should have a smallpox jab, but the Government are inhibited because they think that if people know that the Prime Minister has been vaccinated, millions of them will ask why they cannot also be vaccinated."

John Denham, the minister for policing, crime reduction and community safety, said the Government would not encourage mass vaccination.

He said: "Of course people should go to general practitioners if they want advice, but because of the risks associated with the vaccine, which can produce a severe reaction in one in 600 people, the chief medical officer is not advising a mass vaccination campaign."

A spokesman for Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority said: "The Government is following World Health Organisation guidelines on the best approach in protecting the public against smallpox.

"GPs don't hold stocks of the vaccine, it's not required as the disease was eradicated in 1980.

"The Department of Health has an emergency stockpile which it can release very quickly."

Receiving the vaccine had potentially fatal side effects for some people, he said.