Keir Starmer has been warned the Nuked Blood Scandal is growing out of control as veterans say he has ignored requests to meet them for a year
The Prime Minister has been accused of ignoring the growing Nuked Blood Scandal since coming to office, with more than 50 veterans dying without justice on his watch.
More than 2,000 survivors want the truth about a government programme of blood and urine testing of troops while they were being ordered to take part in nuclear weapons trials during the Cold War.
The medical data that was gathered is now missing from their personnel files, denying them war pensions, compensation, and the truth about whether radiation left their families with a poisonous genetic legacy of cancers, blood disorders, miscarriages and birth defects.
Keir Starmer was invited to meet campaigners and discuss their calls for a public inquiry within days of winning the general election last year, but his correspondence team did not even acknowledge the request.
Since then his government has refused to tell Parliament about evidence it has now found of orders for the long-denied blood tests, serving government lawyers have been identified as having misled courts and judges, and his own officials have admitted scientists may have been conducting the experiments without medical supervision.
Alan Owen, founder of nuclear veteran campaign group LABRATS, said: “This is the longest and worst scandal in British history. Long-denied allegations of using our own troops in radiation experiments are being proven with a growing pile of evidence, an expensive lawsuit, and a police complaint. But it seems we’re not even on his to-do list.”
He added: “Either the PM is ignoring a problem that really needs his attention before it gets any worse, or someone is keeping this off his desk on purpose. Either way, we hear about another veteran dying every single week. These men have an average age of 87, a host of chronic health conditions, and they deserve better than this.”
The PM was tackled on the scandal by backbench Labour MP Emma Lewell in his first appearance at the Despatch Box after the election in July last year, and urged to hold an inquiry. Instead he promised her a meeting with Veterans Minister Al Carns. He has twice met with campaigners, but while he has ordered officials to review 1m pages of archive documents, he has refused all requests to say what he has found.
This week the Mirror reported two of the documents seen by his review include scientists requesting blood tests “from the medico-legal aspect” and a blanket order by Bomber Command for RAF crews to be given them before they took part in weapons tests at Christmas Island in the Pacific.
The minister has ordered the release of a further 10,000 classified documents, thought to include at least 200,000 pages, but there is no date for their publication.
READ MORE: Nuked Blood: The men being asked to set the record straight
Veteran Brian Unthank, 87, who has had 96 skin cancers, two bouts of bladder cancer and is now dealing with an “unusual” prostate cancer, said: “All I want is for Starmer to stand up, admit they got it wrong, apologise and find a way to sort it. But every promise we’ve ever had has been broken.”
Starmer was in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet in 2019 when he signed off on a manifesto pledge to pay survivors £50,000 compensation, but all mention of nuclear veterans was removed from Labour’s latest version.
Meanwhile nearly 4.8m people have seen a viral video about Labour’s broken promises, with footage of deputy leader Angela Rayner, Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces minister Luke Pollard all demanding, while in Opposition, that the Tories order payouts.
The government has expanded the criteria for the nuclear test medal after the Mirror highlighted the story of Operation Bagpipes hero Pete Peters, but so far he is the only veteran to have benefited. The minister has been asked to expand it for hundreds more crews who were ordered to take part in sampling missions through the nuclear tests of other nations, but this week he refused to say when they would receive it.
Colin Duncan, who was a RAF sergeant in 543 Squadron when planes were sent through the clouds of French hyrdogen bombs in 1974, is fighting for the medal to be granted to comrades who suffer the same horrific pattern of illnesses. “We thought the minister was considering new criteria, but I’m not surprised to hear he’s doing nothing of the sort,” said Colin, 86, of Chipping Sodbury. “There must be a couple of thousand veterans the MoD is ignoring.”
If more veterans qualify for the medal, they may also need to be included in long-term health studies which the government relies on to refuse war pensions, which could alter their findings. No10 was contacted for comment.