A message that said “the package has been delivered” was intercepted en route to an official in Moscow shortly after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, it was reported.

The intercept was part of an intelligence package shown to Britain’s allies before scores of Russian spies and diplomats were ousted from more than a dozen countries, according to a report in the Sunday Express. The report cited “insiders” who had seen the intelligence and confirmed that there were two messages intercepted by RAF analysts in southern Cyprus on March 4, the day Mr Skripal, 66, a former spy, was poisoned along with his daughter.

The paper said that one message had been sent from Syria to “an official” in Moscow, and that