The Nuked Blood Scandal is ‘gathering pace’ and politicians have been urged to rebel against ‘official lies’
Politicians in Parliament have been told they risk ‘being complicit’ if they do not act to end the 70-year cover-up of medical testing of troops used in radiation experiments.
Greater Manchester Metro Mayor Andy Burnham urged MPs and peers to rebel against the party whip if the government was unable to deliver justice to the 2,500 survivors of Cold War weapons trials.
The Mirror exposed the Nuked Blood Scandal in 2022 and has since uncovered orders for thousands of troops to be subjected to medical monitoring before and during nuclear bomb tests to see if radiation entered their bodies.
Many say the results are not to be found in their medical files, with entire chunks missing relating to their time at the tests, and widows and next of kin routinely denied access to a veteran’s records.
Former health secretary Mr Burnham, who campaigned for years to expose the cover-up of NHS patients and children being given infected blood products, said that in both scandals officials were misleading ministers and the public because of the likely cost of compensation.
“The official line is still that there were no blood tests of the veterans and there was no data held. I believe that, similarly to the [infected] blood situation, to be an official line but also an official lie. And I believe the danger for all politicians in Westminster right now is, the longer you leave it, the more the whole place becomes complicit in another cover-up,” he said.
“I’ll be honest with you, I think a large part of the problem comes from the Treasury. In the aftermath of these situations I think an iron grip is placed on the statements of ministers and civil servants by the Treasury, there must be no admission of any liability and no word in any statement must ever get close to that.
“Over time it becomes, essentially, official lies, because the Treasury has this iron rule about no admission of liability, irrespective of the circumstances of the case.”
* Watch Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story on iPlayer HERE
Times Radio presenter and former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil said “Treasury lawyers were calling the shots” as the scandal was “gathering pace”. The mayor added that a recent BBC documentary had exposed evidence of criminality and that multiple courts had been given false testimony by officials still working in Whitehall.
He said: “I don’t see how we are in this position with nuclear test veterans, when there was a documentary on BBC2 last week which basically blew the lid off this cover-up in my view. If we don’t see movement on this in relation to an inquiry – the veterans don’t have time, they’ve called for a one year inquiry – it’s incumbent upon people in public life to take the evidence of misconduct in public office to the police.”
Mr Burnham added that with the contaminated blood scandal, “thousands of Parliamentary interventions on the topic over many years” had failed to change the official stance because “nobody was listening”. He said “for all the huffing and puffing, nothing moves the dial until you go to the police or until politicians of all sides say they’re revolting on this issue”.
Mr Burnham said: “It asks some really deep and disturbing questions about the country we live in…. We’re talking about veterans sent overseas to serve this country, and they’ve been in the wilderness for decades. And all the pious words we say about veterans [on Remembrance Sunday], they mean nothing, unless we sort out this issue.”
Defence Secretary John Healey last week announced an internal investigation into the missing medical records. Despite the growing evidence of medical monitoring of troops without their knowledge or consent, the Ministry of Defence still insists that the bomb trials “experimented on weapons, not personnel”.
But veterans’ son Steve Purse, who was born with a large number of disabilities including an undiagnosable form of short stature after his father spent a year in the vicinity of hundreds of toxic plutonium experiments, said the MoD had rewritten the later official studies into the veterans’ health.
“When the first study was published it had to go to the MoD first, for them to OK the release. What they did was, they didn’t like the conclusion, and they rewrote it. So it’s not an independent study, it’s the MoD’s conclusion and it fits their narrative.,” he told Times Radio..
“This problem is getting bigger every time a baby is born.”
