Labour MP Mary Creagh has told of how in she ordered staff at Westminster Tube to shut the station down as the attack outside parliament unfolded.
The former shadow cabinet minister was walking through the tunnel from the Portcullis House office building into the Palace of Westminster on Wednesday afternoon when she saw armed police officers nearby.
“I saw people running towards me,” she told BBC News. “Penny Mordaunt ran up and said ‘there’s shots being fired, we need to get out of this place now’.”
Mordaunt, the disabilities minister, is a Royal Naval Reservist and also a former Armed Forces minister.
Creagh left the parliamentary estate through the doors that connect directly into Westminster Tube station.
“The one thing we don’t want is a whole load of tourists walking up and wandering in with their children into this situation,” she recalls thinking.
“I went to the control room, I told the controller there had been what we thought was at terror attack on the Palace of Westminster and I said ‘you’ve got to shut this station now’.
“I didn’t have my badge, I didn’t have anything. I just had the authority that sheer panic gives you. They took me very seriously.”
At least two people have died in the attack - including a police officer who was stabbed at parliament.